


Anathema

by JennaLee



Category: Rhett & Link
Genre: Brief M/M, Explicit Language, M/M, Mental Instability, Psychological Horror, Rape/Non-con Elements, Suicidal Thoughts, Tragedy, Unreliable Narrator, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-29
Updated: 2015-05-15
Packaged: 2018-03-26 06:49:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,441
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3841156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JennaLee/pseuds/JennaLee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rhett and Link turn a road trip vacation into a week long film project. Their destination - one of the most famous haunted houses in America. Adored by paranormal enthusiasts for decades, the beautiful mansion in southern Oregon has a mysterious and violent history. Of course, the supernatural stuff is just made up - Link's never liked haunted houses, but he doesn't really believe in ghosts or curses. After all, tourists stay there all the time. There's a logical explanation for everything. Or so he believes at first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Misery

**Author's Note:**

> To Jane, and to Conrad, for patiently suffering through endless emails stuffed with draft copies and demands for feedback.

Link wakes up sweaty and dishevelled, black hair stuck to his forehead and his chest heaving. He’s terrified, but the nightmare is already dissipating. It slips away like motes of dust dancing in streams of light as Link wipes a shaky palm across his forehead. Light – sunlight? – oh, dammit! He shoots up from the bed, noticing how bright it already is. How long has he slept? The clock on the wall in his room was useless. It had stopped at six o’clock the first day they’d came, a few minutes after he’d arrived with Rhett after a quick Chinese take-out meal to refuel after their long drive from California. His phone was nowhere to be found.

Frantic, he grabs his glasses and starts to haphazardly make the bed, and it’s only then that he notices the brightness is due to the fact that all the lights in his room are on, not because the sun’s up. How strange. He’d turned them off before bed as usual, of course. Had Rhett come in and turned them on? Why would he – but if not him, then – 

Link curses under his breath and wipes a hand across his mouth. This place is getting to him. He must have got up in the night to pee and crashed back into dreamland without turning the lights back off. It was obvious. And he could sleep through anything, so it wasn’t surprising that he could sleep for hours without being irritated by the bright light.

What other explanation could there possibly be?

There are so many things going wrong. So much he can’t tell Rhett. Getting the chills in certain rooms, a prickly feeling between his shoulder blades. Cold drafts that Rhett doesn’t seem to notice. Doors slamming shut – probably just the drafts in the old house. Sometimes there are footsteps, and Link assumes it’s just Rhett, only to find out later that Rhett had been sitting outside. And that relentless noise that comes and goes like wind in the trees, sinister and hateful.

A crow outside his window shrieks loudly, as if mocking Link for being scared of a silly haunted house. 

Crows, such a bad cliché. Same with the flickering lights, old-fashioned furnishings, heavy drapes on the windows, too many dark corners and twisting hallways that led nowhere. It’s a careful façade meant to draw tourists. Any other house would have been updated and re-modeled to fit the modern family’s needs, but this house’s notoriety made it lucrative to highlight its age and vampiric Victorian allure. It attracted various types of people interested in the paranormal, from actual ‘psychic detectives’ to people that just liked Anne Rice or Kelley Armstrong a lot. It might make for some good footage for Youtube, but houses weren’t actually haunted. Acting nervous was for the fans who wanted to see them get into the spirit. 

Ghosts aren’t real. Everyone knows that. It’s complete baloney. 

What’s happening to Link, though…well…he’s not so sure.

**

Rhett and Link arrived at the Kenora Mansion in their rental car late Monday afternoon. It was a slow, lazy sort of day. They had started out from about halfway, in San Francisco, having cheerfully wasted an entire day’s work of potential filming there by sightseeing, dining, and simply enjoying each other’s company without the pressure of being at work or with their families. The plan was to spend about a week at the mansion filming, and then drive over to the airport in Medford, where their wives would meet them. Then they would all fly up to Vancouver together to attend the 2015 ChannelCon.

It was Rhett’s turn to drive so Link napped in the car through most of northern California despite the epic views, snuggled up in a blue hoodie with his head lolling against the window. He didn’t mind hearing the deep timbre of Rhett’s voice as his friend sang along to the songs he knew on the radio. In fact, he rather liked the way his friend’s voice resonated through his chest, though he’d never say so to Rhett. 

The promise of food finally startles Link out of his doze. Once they’d passed into Oregon, Rhett pulls into a Chinese restaurant in Brookings and they practically eat themselves into a coma. They order chicken stir-fry, wonton soup and egg rolls, and the portions are enormous. The pretty young waitress packs leftover egg rolls into a cardboard box with a little plastic cup of dipping sauce. Link nibbles at them during the rest of the forty-five minute journey to their destination off the Oregon Coast Highway. 

Link is just licking plum sauce from his fingers when Rhett makes a sudden noise beside him. “This is it, I think,” he says, and turns off onto a gravel road that twists and winds into the woods. Rolling down his window, Link tastes salt on the cool summer breeze. The thick brush gives way to cleared land and suddenly the two men get their first glimpse of the fabled mansion. 

“Whoa,” Link exclaims, blinking a little. “This place is huge!”

“You finally excited?” Rhett asks as he drives slowly up to the house and parks the car.

“I might be getting there,” he admits. The smells of sweet grass and spicy pine are most welcoming after being in the car for so long. Link steps out and stretches his arms over his head, groaning with relief as something cracks. Rhett follows suit but moves more stiffly. 

They were laden with supplies – all their video equipment, loads of food, plush sleeping bags, laptops, various props for their planned episodes – but, feeling overly full of cheap Chinese food and exhausted from driving, they leave most of it in the car to grab later. Rhett had the camera out right away, of course, filming everything from the base of the driveway to the front door and beyond. Link shoves a few essentials in his backpack and follows him up the gentle slope.

“Here it is, Mythical Beasts. The most _haunted house_ in _Oregon_!” Rhett tells the camera empathetically, his face a huge grin. “Maybe in the whole United States of America! It’s also the home of Rhett and Link for the next week…at least until one of us is brutally murdered by one of the terrifying ghosts said to haunt this property!”

“Oh, that’s cheerful, Rhett!”

“Now, Link is much less excited than I am about this,” Rhett confides. “He doesn’t like haunted houses. Or scary movies. Or anything fun. Much like my wife…I love you, Jessie,” he adds, looking directly at the camera with an apologetic little smile.

“I like plenty of fun things,” Link protests. “Dead people aren’t fun.”

“Yeah, but scaring the crap outta you sure is.”

“Thanks, Rhett.”

They were approaching a beautiful but very old iron fence that seemed to line the entire property. It was covered with thick green vines and parts of it were falling down in disrepair. Such flaws were forgivable in the presence of the breathtaking view – that enormous, palatial stone structure perched at the top of the small hill as if to glare down at those who dared approach. It was not unfriendly, merely intimidating. On closer inspection you could see flaws on the building, too – missing shingles, peeling paint and some damage to the columns on the veranda. But all in all, it was a beautiful old house. A hundred years ago it must’ve been one of the prettiest houses in the country.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” Rhett says, sounding awestruck. “It’s the perfect ghost house. It feels like I’ve stepped into nineteenth-century England or something.”

“We’re gonna get lost in here,” Link thinks out loud.

Rhett gives him an amused sideways glance. “We’ll leave a trail of breadcrumbs whenever we separate.”

“Okay there, Hansel.”

“Does that mean you’re Gretel?” Rhett shoots back with a grin.

Link laughs. He’d walked right into that one. “Seriously, though. I can’t believe that this was built for one family. You could fit the whole village in here and they could each spend days before they saw one another.”

For the first long stretch of the mansion’s life, it had been a private residence. Link’s mind conjures up images of dapper men in top hats and those long coats and women whose skirts were so long and wide that it looked like they would have trouble getting through doors. A sudden mental image of Rhett all dressed up in dandy fashion with a bristly walrus moustache makes him grin.

In the ‘70s it became a bed and breakfast, and then more of a small hotel at its heyday in the ‘80s. The rumours of hauntings and ghosts started to really kick off then, with many guests claiming to have seen apparitions of various people in the hallways and hearing noises coming from empty rooms. Skeptics blamed mob psychology and most wrote it off as a joke. In the ‘90s, it became a sort of locally famous oddity, often occupied by artists, musicians, writers, and other eccentrics looking for a place to inspire their creativity. For a long time now, the mansion was part tourist attraction, part rental. Link knew that it had been rented briefly by a famous horror author while he was writing his newest book. Other famous types had been here too. Bands, actors. There had even been a few shows and movies filmed around the property. Link could see why. This could easily be used in a historical re-enactment, or as a vampire coven house, something like that.

The iron fence is topped with long dramatic spikes. Rhett points one out for the camera. “Looks deadly,” he notes. 

“Somebody could definitely get really hurt on that,” Link agrees, nodding.

“Touch it, Link,” Rhett encourages, turning the camera on him. “It’s gotta sharp enough to keep all the ghosts from escaping!”

Link is starting to feel more than a little bloated from all the soup and egg rolls he’d just eaten but he manages to smile brightly for the camera. “Come on, Rhett, ghosts aren’t stopped by fences.” He bends down over a couple of bars that had fallen to the ground and runs a finger over one iron spike. He’s surprised by its razor-fine point. “Wow! Whoever put this up must’ve wanted to impale burglars like that guy who inspired Dracula.”

“Vlad the Impaler,” Rhett says in a creepy voice.

“Yeah, him. Crazy guy.”

“Let’s take a walk around the place first, to get a good look.” Rhett gestures, and Link follows him around the side of the house. 

The grounds are as impressive as the mansion itself. Someone must come mow the lawn and do some maintenance or else the weeds would have taken over, but the general impression is of isolation and wilderness. The grass is long and plush and sways gently in the evening breeze. Most of the trees are proud and stately, but some of the ones closer to the house itself seemed to have died long ago. They look like skeletons. Link supposes it’s intentional to leave them standing. Haunted houses are supposed to have dead trees, swamps and thistles, not pretty manicured flowers and delicate cage-wrapped baby saplings.

“Is that a pond?” Link asks, hopping in front of Rhett to be on camera. “I think I see cattails.” 

Rhett films Link’s face, and then out over his shoulder. “I think you’re right, Link. Now that you say it, I kinda smell it. You know that wet sort of smell…”

“That sounds disgusting,” Link giggles and makes a face. “Wet sort of smell,” he repeats, mocking Rhett’s voice.

“You know what I mean. It smells like a lake. Let’s go see.”

The brush gets thicker and thicker, but as the men approach they can see that there is indeed a pond – or a small lake – and even a dock leading out into the water. “You think its safe?” Link pushes reeds aside, carefully making his way forward. The ground beneath his feet is getting softer. “That dock, I mean. It looks pretty old.”

“I’ll go first if you’re scared. You hold the camera.”

“I’m not scared!” Link protests, but at that moment an _enormous_ spider scuttles out over the wooden beams near the end of the dock, and both he and Rhett let out rather unmanly yells.

“Aaah! Is that a spider or a freakin’ rat?”

“Golly, Link! Look at that thing! It’s the size of my hand!”

“Dock spiders. Gosh. I’ve seen ‘em before…Fishing spiders, I think you call ‘em…”

“Are they venomous?”

“I don’t think so. Doesn’t make it any less terrifying. Euurgh!” Link nearly squeals as the huge spider moves again, lightning fast.

Rhett laughs and films Link’s reaction happily. “What if there was one on you right now? On your back? What would you do?”

“I don’t know, because they’re all on the dock. Right?”

Both men look down at their feet carefully, and then squint into the thick brush they’re standing in. 

“Link,” Rhett says in a very serious voice. “Don’t move, okay?”

“Don’t mess with me, man! Don’t do it!”

“I’m not kidding.”

Link begins to frantically swipe at his back and legs blindly. He backs away from the lake, nearly tripping over his own feet in his haste, until he hears Rhett begin to snicker.

“Dangit, Rhett! Don’t scare me!” 

“Don’t fall for it then, come on. That was so obvious. Heck, you’d feel one of those things crawling on you. Imagine how much they weigh, Link. It’d be like…a mouse walkin’ up your leg. All furry and wanting to cuddle.”

“I’ve got the chills and you’re not helping,” Link whines, playing up his discomfort for the sake of comedy. He really does have goose bumps, though, all over his arms and legs. Maybe that’s just from the dropping temperature.

“What doesn’t give you chills, Link?” Rhett pauses. “Whoa, what’s that?”

“Rhett, I’m not falling for it twice,” Link protests, rolling his eyes. The skin on his back prickles and he scratches himself frantically. “I’m getting that feeling where I think there’s stuff crawling all over me. Ugh.”

“No, I mean behind you, that shed thing. I didn’t know this was here.” Rhett makes a sweeping gesture, pointing to somewhere left of the house.

Link turns to see what Rhett is looking at, and finds himself gazing at the sorriest excuse for a shed he’s ever seen. It’s as old as the house, and obviously dangerous. It’s basically a pile of broken, ashy wooden boards with nails sticking out haphazardly. Only two walls are really standing; the other two are beginning to cave in. There was once a window but now there’s just a big square hole.

“You’d think they’d put caution tape around this death trap for the tourists at least,” Rhett observes.

“Maybe tourists stick to the house and don’t come back here.”

“Still, jeeze. They should get rid of this. It doesn’t even look haunted. It just looks like an accident.”

Link had to agree. “What do you need a shed for when you’ve got a mansion that big, anyway?”

“For canoes, maybe? We should’ve brought a canoe, Link!”

“I’m not walking across that dock.”

“C’mon, Link, you know I’d protect you.”

“You would not! You’d run away faster than I would if we saw that spider.”

“There’s probably more than one spider,” observes Rhett, mischievously. 

“A whole family of little eight-legged arachnid monsters. Gosh, that’s disturbing!” Link is falling easily into his on-screen persona, more dramatic and excitable than his usual self.

“Is it getting cold?” Rhett suddenly asks. “I feel all shivery.”

“Me too,” admits Link. “Maybe we should get inside and check things out in the house itself. It’s not all that fun out here.”

“Yeah, let’s go check out all the ghosts!” Rhett’s long legs are better suited to getting out of the waist-high brush around the pond and he quickly leaves Link far behind. 

“No fair,” Link calls after him. “Wait up!”

With his next step Link’s foot makes a hideous squelching noise as it sinks into a small puddle of mud. He groans and stops to yank his sneaker out of the mess, cursing quietly under his breath. It almost causes him to overbalance and fall, but he manages to catch himself. A bit of wetness soaks through to his sock and he groans again. Figures. At least he was wearing his crappy old sneakers. His new Mythical Shoes were in the car. 

The wind hisses through the reeds, a strange whispering noise. The sun falls behind a cloud and the coldness in the air seems to sink into Link’s chest. 

_Link,_ he hears, faint.

“Rhett? Yeah, I’m coming. I stepped in some mud.” Shivering, he tries to scrape off the worst of the muck covering his shoe.

_Liiiink…_

It’s not Rhett. Link frowns. It’s almost like the sound is coming from inside his own head. It’s a silvery sort of noise that comes from everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Nervously, he straightens up and looks all around himself, even peering into the dark shed through the hole where the window was. As if he could see anything. Something about the shed makes him feel incredibly uneasy, he realizes. It’s not just ugly, it’s downright… revolting. The smell of pond scum sticks in the back of his throat and he nearly gags.

 _What the heck? That was weird_ , he thinks to himself with a frown. He coughs, swallows, and takes a deep breath. The urge to retch quickly fades but he can’t stop eyeing the shed. What of it? It’s just a pile of useless lumber. There are no serial killers hiding in there, nor any ghosts, probably not even any of those dang spiders. Link shakes it off and turns his back to the ugly thing, walking quickly towards the house. He’s glad Rhett isn’t there to see him getting so jumpy.

The wind rustles and sighs, and this time it sounds like a sad moan. The cattails sway gently in the breeze. Odd shadows dance and twist with their rhythm. The moan of the wind deepens, calling out what sounds like, _Noooooo…_

Link decides he’s more tired than he thought. He hurries to catch up with Rhett, thinking maybe he’d take a quick nap. If the beds here weren’t comfortable, he had his plush sleeping bag and pillows from home.

He pretends he doesn’t hear his name whispered on the wind one last time, so soft it was certainly not real at all.

**

Rhett claims a ground floor bedroom near the back of the house and adjacent to the main living room, pronouncing the view of the biggest twisted, blackened dead tree in the backyard ‘awesome’. Rhett embraced the idea of ghosts, of hauntings, of unexplainable mysteries. This was a game to him and he clearly meant to make the most of it. Link rather liked Rhett’s room, too. It had one of those old-fashioned window benches and a king-sized four-poster bed done up in a red-and-cream duvet. The bed hangings were crimson brocade, very Victorian.

Link climbs one of the many staircases off of the main living room and wanders the floor above for a while, dismissing two rooms that smelled like mildew, and another because it had a spider web in the window. 

“Come on, Link, spiders are scary!” Rhett exclaims, watching Link from the doorway. “You gotta feel the atmosphere, man. It’s not a big dock spider, see? Just a cute little guy. Hey, little guy, be friends with Link.”

“Touch it. Touch that ‘cute little’ spider. I dare you.”

“Nah, you want him to imprint on you, Link. Like a duckling. The first thing it sees is gonna be it’s mom.”

“I don’t wanna be a spider-mom, man.” Link’s tone makes Rhett let out a genuine laugh.

“Okay. We’ll just name it and be friends. It looks like a…a…” Rhett squints at the spider from a safe distance. “It looks like a Larry.”

“Larry. Larry the Spider,” Link echoes, lips quirking up in a smile.

“Got a better idea? He’s my friend now. Show him some respect.”

“Well, you take this room, if you like Larry so much. I’ll take yours.”

“No, no,” Rhett says hastily. “I like mine. Let’s keep looking for you, though.” It makes Link grin despite himself. Rhett didn’t like bugs and spiders any more than he did.

“We could just share a room,” Link suggests suddenly.

“We’ll probably just end up sleeping in the same room when you run in here at two AM. But still, Link, put in a token effort here!”

“I guess I’d like somewhere to put all my stuff,” he admits. “But you took the best room. I’m jealous. That bed is awesome.”

“What’s wrong with the room just at the top of the stairs?” Rhett asks, tapping his fingers on the doorframe restlessly.

Link frowns. “Where? I don’t think I saw it. I just saw a bathroom there when I came up.”

“That’s the en-suite bathroom. If you turn the corner, it opens up into a huge bedroom. It’s pretty clean.”

“Oh.” Link tries not to sound too relieved at the idea of a room relatively close to Rhett’s and the main floor. “My very own bathroom, cool. I’ll check that one out.”

“Great. Get unpacked, relax, do your thing. I’m gonna start doing a bit of research for our next video.”

“Like a background story kind of thing, right?”

“Yeah, just about who died here, the rumours, the things people have claimed to see and hear.”

“That’s kinda morbid, Rhett. We’ll have to end with something a little less…awful.”

“All right, Linkster, that’s your territory then. Come down in a bit and we’ll bounce some ideas off each other.”

“Sure thing, Rhett,” Link replies absently. At the staircase, they part, Rhett heading down to where his laptop was waiting in the room he’d claimed. He had to duck low to avoid the ceiling in places. It was such an old house, built cramped like they always were back before everyone was big on open-concept living areas.

Dropping his backpack onto his arm, Link turns into what he’d previously thought was just a bathroom. It was well-kept and completely clean. Pausing briefly to admire the deep claw foot tub and the ornate sculpted metal 1920s-style plumbing fixtures, he continues around the corner as Rhett had instructed to find an enormous bedroom beyond.

He’s immediately satisfied with it. This room is bright with sunshine. It’s clean too, although it smells a little stale. Nothing a good airing out wouldn’t fix. He’ll have to open the window for a while. There’s a bed, plainer than Rhett’s but still large and comfy-looking, made up with pleasant blues and greys. A deeper blue recliner is tucked in the corner beside the window. The furnishings were all startlingly modern against the dark wood floor and ancient peeling wallpaper. Link walks the length of the room to peer at a bulletin board on the wall. It’s covered in pictures of people who’ve stayed in the mansion before. A few pretty big music groups who had come here to record and write – Link recognizes their faces but can’t name who they are. A bunch of goth kids, naturally. A Supernatural fan club, a Twilight-themed convention. There’s even a photo of Alice Cooper, who had stayed here when it was still a bed-and-breakfast, standing out by the dock. It makes the room seem a little more connected to the world outside and Link likes it.

“Thanks, Rhett,” he murmurs to himself.

Taking off his backpack, Link begins to dump out his belongings on the bed. Cell phone, laptop, chargers for both, a snack-sized bag of almonds. His clothes are back in the car but he brought sweatpants and boxers. Maybe he’d have a quick shower and just change into those. There was a towel hanging in the bathroom. The owners of the property had assured him that all the linens, towels, kitchen dishware and other small personal items were new and cleaned often. Whatever belonged to the creepy house before it was converted into a tourist hotspot was locked up in china cabinets, closets, or the attic. All the plumbing and electrical stuff was re-done and regularly inspected, too.

Speaking of plumbing, he probably should test the shower and the water pressure here. Link wanders back into the bathroom, humming to himself. He takes off his glasses and tucks them on his head so they won’t steam up and blind him when he turns on the tap. The little wheels for hot and cold water are stiff, but with a few squeaks from the pipes (and a few grunts of effort from himself) they both turn and emit clear warm water. Link runs his hands under it and splashes some on his face.

It’s fine. Clean. But – it smells funny, he thinks suddenly. Tangy. Briny, really, like the ocean. He blinks it out of his eyes and looks down into a sea of crimson on white, and reality swerves right off the road. 

The tub is filling with blood. 

Link’s mind reels with disbelief and his stomach clenches in disgust and horror. His hands are covered with it, and when he licks his lips unconsciously, he realizes that it’s all over his face, too. A low moan comes from his throat and a crackling noise bursts in both of Link’s ears. It’s like radio static, but with a fine, slithering whisper hidden beneath it like he’s caught the slightest hint of a distant broadcast. The whisper coils and rises, turning into a shout, into a scream.

Link closes his eyes and tries to clear his head. It’s possible that his ears are just clogged, and he works his jaw muscles to try and pop them. It’s difficult, though. There’s a sour, rotten smell in the air, distracting him. Like roadkill lying out in the sun for hours. Spoiled meat, almost like the congealed blood taco he bit into on the show. The stench fills his throat and seems to coat his mouth and it becomes way, way too much. He retches. 

Something squeaks and swishes and his heart nearly stops. Someone’s in the tub. A person. A body – ?

_Crrssssshhhhhhhh –_

_LIIIINK – !_

“What?!” A scream gets caught in his throat and he jerks backward, banging his elbow painfully off of the metal toilet paper roll holder. Frantic, he shoves his glasses back on his face and looks around wildly. All is silent. The tub is empty except for a bit of warm water trickling happily down the drain. Link turns the knobs off with shaking hands.

Nothing. It was nothing. He stares at the bathtub stupidly, wondering what had just happened. Why was he such a scaredy-cat? It had been a trick of the light, that’s all. Probably from being blinded by the glare of the sunshine through the windows. And his own overactive imagination was to blame for the rest. What a horror movie cliché. Link curses his own gullibility and rubs at his irritated ulnar nerve with a wince. At least nobody had seen him freak out like a frightened child.

That’s all this place is, he muses. Mind games. Psychological horror. One person says they see a ghost and then everyone walks around feeling spooky until they freak themselves out when something moves or a pipe bangs in the wall. Plenty of people have also stayed here for weeks, or even lived here for a long time, without seeing anything at all – and, big surprise, it was usually the people who didn’t believe in all the haunted house bullshit. The human brain was one big sponge ready to soak up whatever it wanted.

“Get a hold of yourself, Link,” he mutters out loud. “Buckle down and go do some work.”

**

The room is dark until Rhett and Link flick their flashlights on simultaneously, illuminating their faces from the bottom to cast ghoulish shadows.

“Good mythical…evening,” Link begins grandly, but quickly adopts a gravely whisper. “The sun has gone down, and we’re about to spend our first night at the most haunted residence in the state of Oregon.”

Rhett makes a face at the camera, baring his teeth. Link follows suit with a snarling face of his own.

“Gosh, yours looks cool,” Rhett says, glancing at the screen. “Look at that, man. Do you feel scary? You look scary.”

“You’re all beard, Rhett. You’re just giving yourself a…a golden beard, with that flashlight. Angel beard.”

“You’ve got vampire teeth,” notes Rhett, and Link pulls back his lips for the camera obligingly. The lighting emphasizes his sharp canines. “Hey, if you’re a vampire, that makes you the baddest thing in the house. You’ve got my back, right?”

“What would a vampire do to a ghost? I can’t bite a ghost.” Link glances to the side to meet Rhett’s eyes.

“Maybe you could turn into a bat.”

“And fly away and leave you here. That’s my plan, alright.”

They both laugh, but then something thumps loudly in the ceiling and Link’s eyes widen. “Rhett, what was that?”

“What was what? You hear a ghost, Link?”

“No – that noise. That thump.”

“I didn’t hear anything. Either your ears are ringing, or you’re picking up on all the _evil energy_ in this house.” Rhett grins, eerie in the strange light. The shadows cast on his face make his eyes look almost cartoonishly evil. Link laughs, but there’s no real humour in it. 

“It’s just pipes or something, right?”

“It’s getting cool outside. Things are contracting. Old houses creak and groan a lot, Link.” 

“Thanks, Rhett,” he shoots back, a bit irritably. He knew that. It was just a particularly loud noise. He tries to keep his face composed so the fans wouldn’t pick up on his emotions.

Rhett is sensitive to Link’s mood and begins talking directly to the camera, letting Link be calm and almost silent, collecting himself. They’re always quick to take the reins for each other like that. They’re not always both in the mood to film right on cue. Usually Link just needs a minute or to and then he’s back to normal.

As the segment goes on, though, Link tries to step up to the plate and fails miserably. He completely messes up every shot when he tries to jump in. He stammers, he fidgets, he loses his train of thought halfway through sentences and can’t even turn it into a joke and laugh about it. 

Rhett nudges his knee against Link’s, a small comforting gesture that the viewers can’t see. Obviously, he’s noticing Link’s weird burst of anxiety, but he doesn’t call him out on it. Instead Rhett hogs the limelight and pretends he’s just overexcited, and Link gratefully lets him take the lead as he talks about the history of the mansion, all the different ghost sightings, and the various explanations for why everybody was experiencing this paranormal stuff.

“So it’s been said that there are up to twenty ghosts living here,” continues Rhett, glancing at his notes quickly. “Some of them are seen more than others. All of them were victims of tragic or unexplained deaths, which believers say is the reason their spirits are stuck. They’re confused and won’t move on to whatever comes after.”

“Tragic like how?” Link breaks in, trying to lead Rhett along like he always does when they tell a story.

“Well…” Rhett puts his palms on the table in front of him and begins to read points off his little notepad, going through the stories of the most famous ghosts of the house. Link already knows what he’s going to say, since he’s read all the stories and articles and done all the same research that Rhett did. So he lets his attention wander a bit as Rhett goes into story telling mode, glossing over the really morbid or violent bits for the sake of their family-friendly image. The girl found dead in the bathroom. A mysterious body found shoved inside the old dumbwaiter chute. The old woman with Alzheimer’s who had lived alone for years, her brain slowly deteriorating, wandering the twisting hallways for so long that she had either forgotten to eat or drink or couldn’t find the kitchen. She died of dehydration. The little kid who got locked in a trunk in the attic and suffocated. It does make for a good horror story, morbid as it is. Most of the ‘famous’ deaths were decades ago, or even older, like the kid in the attic who had died in 1911. People might not be so fascinated if someone tried to take delight in a house ‘haunted’ by a kid that died last month.

A poke to his shoulder tunes Link back in to what Rhett is saying.

“Carbon monoxide poisoning,” Rhett explained with his head tilted toward Link, “is one possible explanation for ghost sightings. You can’t see or smell carbon monoxide gas, and when something malfunctions – like an old gas heater – it can slowly release the poisonous gas. Chronic exposure to low levels of carbon monoxide can cause delirium, depression, confusion, and hallucinations.” 

“Without killing you?” Link twists his wedding ring and plays with the angle of his flashlight, watching the results in the viewscreen. 

“It can kill you after a while, sure. That’s why it’s so important to have carbon monoxide detectors in your house.”

“Do we have one in this house?”

“Oh yeah, for safety and legal reasons. But these old stories all come from years ago. It’s possible that an old boiler or something could have been leaking carbon monoxide. In fact – I did a little – boopity-boop-boop – research and found a story of a family here in the States who moved into their dream home but became convinced it was haunted after everybody in the family started seeing strange apparitions and having night terrors. And then – all their house plants died!”

“Oh, goodness. I’d be pretty scared by then.”

“Well, that kinda helped ‘em realize that it wasn’t just bad dreams and weird visions, I think. Luckily, the kids were taken to the doctor after suffering headaches – another symptom – and they realized what was happening.”

“Was everybody okay?”

“Yeah, they all got better. Nobody died. But they could have!”

“This makes a lot of sense,” Link tries to switch up the lead. “I mean, a lot of these stories come from Victorian times, back when they had gas lamps and stuff, and nobody had carbon monoxide detectors.”

“Exactly,” Rhett confirms. “Myth – busted!” he says in a decent imitation of Adam Savage. Link smiles. Seeing himself in the view screen, Link notices how strange his face looks and is momentarily startled. His smile is almost cruelly sarcastic. But it’s probably just his imagination.

“Well, we’re off to bed!” Rhett concluded. “Join us tomorrow for our Super Séance Sleepover, where we bust out our Ouija board and try to talk to the spirits of the mansion.”

Link lets out a breath of relief when the camera is turned off. He didn’t like being in an anxious mood like this. There’s no need for him to wonder whether the viewers would notice – of course they would. The comments would fill up with remarks about how weird Link was, how tight his voice sounded, how he was being a big wuss or maybe getting sick. The anxiety must show on his face. Rhett’s hand reaches up to stroke his upper arm, a gesture so tender that it tugs at Link’s heart. Rhett isn’t always so physical with his affection, but he knows Link likes it. Sometimes, Link _needs_ it.

“Thanks, Rhett,” he says with a sigh. The flashlight is so bright it hurts Link’s eyes. He turns it off and rubs at them.

“You tired or somethin’?” Rhett asks gently. “You got the strangest look on your face for a while there. I thought you might be getting nauseous. Like the Kung Pao chicken wasn’t sittin’ quite right.”

“The chicken was fine. No, it was nothing like that. It was – oh, nevermind. Just didn’t feel like talking.”

Rhett shoots him a look that clearly says, _Bullshit._ “No, really. What’s wrong? I didn’t mean to make fun of you or anything. I wasn’t sure if you were kidding about hearing something.”

“I’m okay, really. I just – I dunno, I got a little worked up thinking about all those people. I know it was a long time ago. Just – it’s so creepy, isn’t it?”

“Sure is,” Rhett agrees. “I feel sorry for that old woman. It took so long before anybody bothered to go look for her.”

Link nods slowly. “Yeah. Rich, but so lonely.”

“Some of the stories are way worse. I kept it pretty light-hearted – as light-hearted as you can get about a house that’s famous for having had a bunch of people die tragically in it.”

“Like the brothers’ murder-suicide,” Link recalls the Wiki article. “One guy beat his brother to death. Or did he strangle him? And they found the body of a teenager in the lake, and the killer was never identified.”

“And the girl I mentioned in the bathroom – I made it sound like she just kinda dropped dead mysteriously, but she slit her wrists in the tub.”

“Is that so she didn’t make a mess with the blood? Being in the bathtub, I mean.”

“I think the hot water helps you bleed out, or something. Oh, I dunno. I don’t wanna talk about that.” Rhett frowns at him as if to say, _Don’t ask creepy questions._ “I wasn’t sure if we should get into all that stuff about how this place has a weirdly high number of heart attacks and strokes. I think that list we saw online was just blowing stuff out of proportion. You know, like the Bermuda Triangle? A lot of ships did go down in that area, but a lot of people say that for a high-traffic shipping route, the numbers really aren’t that unusual. People are sure gullible sometimes.”

“Yeah. Probably.” Link tries not to sound irritated, he really does, but he doesn’t want to laugh about people being gullible and easily spooked. It feels like an accusation, which is foolish. Guilt tugs at his chest when Rhett falls silent and gives Link a searching look as if wondering what he said wrong. God knows how many times Rhett’s patiently listened to Link babble on about something trivial. 

The two of them fall into a short reverie, both lost in thought. Link had forced the bathroom incident to the back of his mind, but suddenly it all comes back to him. The blood in the tub, and that poor suicidal girl in the stories they read – was there a connection? Was it Link’s room that she had killed herself in, in that old claw foot tub in the en-suite bathroom? He could probably find out if he looked online. _No, that’s pointless, Link. What old house didn’t have at least one person die within its walls? And you didn’t see a ghost or a body, anyway._ It was the truth. He had imagined a bad smell, like a corpse, but maybe it was just the smell of the water not having been run in a while. Very normal.

“Tomorrow we’ll do something a lot more fun,” Rhett promises, breaking the spell. “Maybe we’ll go into the village and go to that restaurant we passed.” He sounds mildly apologetic. 

Link forces a bright look on his face and notices the tall man relax at the sight of his smile. “Good. And we’ll film something when we get back. I wrote some stuff about other famous ghosts. Like the ghost of the Hollywood sign, and Marilyn Monroe.”

“I have a little story to tell,” Rhett adds. “This really freaky dream Locke had once. Remember? I told you in the car last week on the way to work.”

“Oh, me too!” He sits up straighter and sidles closer to Rhett, his confidence returning. “Remember that time I told you about when Christy was talking in her sleep after we saw that horror movie? That was almost as scary as that shared nightmare you had with Jessie.”

“Did you think about that séance thing too?” Rhett asks. They had talked about it during the long car ride. Link had suggested filming a funny sort of ‘sleepover’ themed evening, complete with hilarious pyjamas, a blanket fort, and a Ouija board.

“Yeah, I have a rough outline of what I want to do.”

“Cool. Wanna show me before bed?” 

Link thinks it over. “I dunno, I’m kinda tired.” Right on cue, he yawns, so wide he nearly cramps the underside of his jaw. It’s only eight o’clock or so, but it feels much later.

“Yeah, you look like you need some sleep. I’m gonna have a shower first. I feel like I still smell like Chinese food.”

A shudder grips Link as he remembers the bathtub in his room. “Uh, okay. Enjoy.”

“If you get scared, just come down to my room,” Rhett teases, poking at Link’s chest with his middle finger when the brunet yawns again and stretches. 

It tickles and makes Link squirm. “Sure, Rhett,” he manages to say, pushing his friend’s hand away.

The smile fades from Rhett’s face at Link’s unenthusiastic tone. “You sure you’re feeling okay?”

“Yeah.” He manages a smile. “I’m just tired and cranky, Rhett. Don’t mind me.”

“Get some rest, brother.”

“I will.”

**

He’s not that tired, really. Just sort of mentally burnt out.

There are a million things Link could be doing. He could be making notes, reading emails, planning tomorrow’s filming, or calling Christy – but instead he’s curled up in his bedroom, reading more about the Kenora Mansion and it’s supposed ghosts. Link doesn’t know why the stories have such a strong hold on him. It’s morbidly fascinating. Of course, he knows awful things happen every day. Famine, murder, war. But the people he’s reading about had all lived right under this roof, as real as Link himself. 

One of the most commonly seen ghosts, as Rhett had summarized earlier, was that of Howard Benjamin Trent, aged ten. A number of guests here saw him outside on the old swing set until the aging playground equipment was torn down over a decade ago. Born 1901. Died 1911. Tragic, so young. The attic in this place had apparently held a number of those old-fashioned trunks that locked from the inside. The kid had climbed in, playing a game, and gotten trapped. It probably wasn’t completely airtight, but there certainly wasn’t enough oxygen for him to survive very long. It would have gotten warmer and warmer in the trunk, and the kid would begin to panic and breathe even faster, speeding up the process of his own death.

Link had known from his early research into the mansion that the kid had suffocated, but he most definitely did not need to know that the boy’s fingernails had been torn and bloody from trying to claw his way out of the trunk. Nausea rises in the back of his throat as his mind instantly pictures his own Lincoln, so close to Howard’s age, screaming and bleeding and turning blue – 

He shakes his head furiously. There’s no point in dwelling on awful thoughts like that. But – gosh, imagine how those parents must have felt, finding that poor boy’s body. No wonder it had become such a famous ghost story. It wasn’t something you forgot easily.

Link closes the tab he was on and goes to another. There’s an article here about one of the bands that had recorded half an album here, an interview with the bassist who had seen another one of the famous ghosts Rhett had mentioned – the old woman who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. Hotel guests had reportedly seen her shuffling down hallways and passing by doors in their peripheral vision.

_Q: So tell me, what was it like recording in the famous Kenora Mansion?”_

_A: Well, we were all pretty stoked at first. Frank, he was so excited. He always believed in this kind of_ [expletive] _, you know. The first night, though, he was the only one who didn’t feel any weird stuff. The rest of us got goose bumps all at the same time like, five times in a row. And I heard the bathtub running at night. Man, I thought the guys were playing a trick on me._

_Q: You claimed to have actually seen one of the ghosts too, is that right?_

_A: I did. My wife still thinks I’m crazy._ [laughs] _Maybe it was a hallucination, whatever. I saw what I saw. I got up super early – like four AM – and I wanted to go downstairs and get a piece of pizza from the fridge. Our schedules were all whacked out from trying to stay up all night a few times. My stomach hurt from the booze and I was getting cold, and I thought maybe food would help._

_Q: Party hard, work hard, is that right?_

_A: Oh yeah, that rockstar lifestyle._ [laughs] _Anyway – I popped my head out through my door, right, and I looked down the hallway and saw a person. At first I was like, oh, it’s just Bob, but then I noticed it was this old lady. Maybe eighty-five years old. A great-grandma at least. She was kinda shuffling slowly, facing away from me. I nearly – oh, man, I thought I was dreaming. Then she stopped, and started to turn around like she heard me, and I freaked out and jumped back in my room. But I know I wasn’t dreaming cause I never fell back asleep or anything. I just waited till I heard the others get up and then I finally came out…_

_Q: Did you tell them what you saw?_

_A: I did, but I kinda made it seem like it could be a joke. I didn’t wanna be known as the scaredy-cat. But then Frank said he heard someone crying and banging on the walls or something, and Pete said the lights kept flickering and he heard this weird noise like static coming from nowhere –_

BANG!

The bedroom door violently slams shut, hard enough to make the pictures sway on the walls. Link jerks upright, his heart practically jumping out of his chest. The laptop slips off his thighs but thankfully lands safely on the bed.

“Rhett?” he calls nervously, his voice thin. “Was that you?”

Silence. Link takes a slow, steadying breath. Calm down, he orders himself firmly. Either Rhett’s playing a trick on you or there’s a draft in the house. Big freakin’ deal, a hundred-and-fifty year old mansion has a few cracks in the walls. What a surprise. 

“Rhett!” he calls out, louder.

“Down here, man!” Rhett’s voice, very faint, floats up from the main level of the house. “What’s up?”

“Nothin’!” he calls down, feeling even more stupid than before. “Thought I heard you say something.” What’s he going to say? He’s scared of loud noises and needs Rhett to hold his hand? Right. He was reading something creepy and got spooked, that’s all. Irritated with himself, Link gets up, opens the door, and wedges it in place with one of his shoes. There. That way he doesn’t feel closed in, and Rhett can hear him, and the door won’t blow around from the drafts.

Speaking of drafts, it _is_ colder than usual in here. His bare feet are freezing on the bare floor. It makes his heart start to beat faster, fluttering in his chest like a bird in a cage. The hair on his neck prickles up. Link steps back towards the bed, cautious, like a skeletal hand will snag his ankle as he walks. There’s a heavy weight in his gut and it’s not nausea, but the vague sense of something not right. It makes him shiver and clutch his stomach. Gosh, he wishes he just insisted on sharing a room with Rhett.

Mentally, Link rolls his eyes at himself. He’s almost forty years old. He shouldn’t need someone to tell him monsters and ghosts aren’t real. 

Focusing on the screen in front of him again, Link scrolls down through the Google results until he finds another legitimate-looking source. _Party ends in tragedy…serial rapist takes another victim, and then his own life…_ Yeah, that didn’t sound like a fun read. He clicks another link. _Murder-suicide at fabled Kenora Mansion B &B…two brothers dead…_ he knew about that one. _Mysterious drowning leaves family devastated…signs of foul play…no suspects as of yet…_ Click. _Father shoots son, wife after losing family fortune in a casino…_ Jesus! People were nuts. Link can’t help but shiver and think of Christy and the kids. He’d rather die than lay a finger on any of them. 

One thing was for sure. The house had a violent and terrifying history. Link doesn’t need to keep reading all this sad stuff. He knows most of the stories now and he shouldn’t be indulging his morbid curiosity like rubber-neckers gawking at a bad car accident. The dead were dead, and there was nothing to be done about it. And their ghosts certainly didn’t linger around the house, slamming doors and making weird noises, playing poltergeist for a pair of hapless Internetainers. 

That was just silly.

**

Link spends the first night in a horrible cycle of waking up sweaty and terrified, smelling that sickly rotten odour of things dead and decaying, then falling back asleep and into a different nightmare. He dreams of wandering through the house, limbs ancient and stiff, not knowing what day it is, what month it is, and why he was so alone. He dreams of being completely immobilized in complete darkness, each breath bringing less oxygen than the one before. He dreams of the shed by the lake. Of whispers in his ear, a constant hum that grows more distant the harder he tries to focus on it. 

Sometimes, in between, he thinks he wakes up. But when he gets out of bed, everything’s changed. The house is warm and cheery, full of light and people. They’re making a lot of noise downstairs. Link staggers to the bathroom, and there’s a woman in an emerald green dress standing at the mirror, applying a rosy lipstick. She smiles at Link, seemingly unsurprised to see him. She’s very pretty. Link doesn’t know her, but she wraps her arms around his waist. The pleasant scent of gardenias washes over him. Her eyes are big and grey and framed with doe-like lashes, which she flutters at him invitingly.

“Link,” she murmurs, “what are you doing here?”

“This is my room,” he says, laughing strangely. He feels tipsy. “Hey, c’mon…I’m married.” Link tries to reach for her arms, to gently disentangle himself from her grasp, but he can’t close his hands over anything solid. “Who are you?” What else can he say?

“You weren’t invited, you know,” she tells him, giggling. When their eyes meet again, her smile fades and she looks worried. “They don’t want you here. What are you doing?”

“I don’t know,” Link says woozily. There’s a strange echoing distortion in his voice, like he’s calling to this girl from the other end of a long cavernous hallway. “I think I’m sleeping. How do you know my name?”

She starts to shake her head, looking anxiously at the door. “You should get out of here.”

“You’re the one in my room,” he points out, smiling stupidly. He knows he’s being silly but he can’t help it. This is all so crazy. 

“This isn’t a good place to be. It never was. Some people are fine for a while. Like your friend. For others, it will take everything away from you and suck you dry.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, but it has to. There’s no stopping it, not at this point. Your fear excites them. Here, the souls of the damned breed monsters from fear.” She sounds sad but resigned.

Link doesn’t know how to respond. He just smiles again and shakes his head in confusion. “Where’s Rhett? They’re gonna wake him up with all that noise.”

“Take him and go. It might already be too late.” She turns back to the mirror and it shatters. She screams. Blood splatters over the pristine sink and over the floor. Link can’t look at it. He stumbles away, closes the door, and hits the bed face-first. Everything goes black and the headboard bangs against the wall. Startled by the noise, he turns on his side, and the house is silent once more. Is he really awake? Link can’t tell. He’s hot, then he’s cold, then he’s hot again, and he tosses and turns and can’t muster the energy to stand up. 

Finally, he rises and looks out the window. It’s broad daylight and there’s a strange but familiar smell to the air. “Autumn…” he mutters out loud. The trees are in their full glory, all rusty orange and shimmering reds and pops of yellow here and there. The grass is brilliantly gold-green in the light of the sun, except for a huge patch near the old swing set. That patch is the colour of rust. His stomach tightens. There’s a big shape lying on top of it. A very familiar shape…

It clicks. It’s Rhett. Rhett, his best friend, lying on the grass, apparently unconscious. Hopefully only unconscious. Link cries out in anguish, and suddenly he’s in the yard, running towards the prone figure. Falling to his knees, he shakes the limp body, a moan rising in his throat when he feels how cold and dead Rhett’s skin feels.

“No, no, oh god, Rhett, please, you can’t be dead, you can’t…” Link shakes him harder. “Wake up! You have to wake up! RHETT!”

The man’s head lolls around like his neck is made out of rubber, and Link gags. There are sharp bumps sticking out of the side of Rhett’s throat. For some reason Link finds himself reaching out to touch them, like he needs to make sure his eyes are working. He feels the sharpness of bone beneath skin. Oh, God, Rhett’s neck was broken. How in the world –

Then Rhett’s eyes open and Link freezes in shock.

A low, guttural moan escapes his friend’s slack mouth. Link screams and collapses backward onto his elbows. Rhett is dead, surely, there’s blood pooling beneath him, darkening the skin on the backs of his arms into purple-black bruises and spreading onto the grass from some unseen wound. But he’s looking at Link with those horrible glazed eyes, accusatory and angry. His lips are moving. Link scrambles to back away in a ridiculous sort of crabwalk. He can’t seem to stand up. 

“You did this,” Rhett grunts. Blood trickles out of his mouth and down his chin. “Brother…”

It’s like being kicked in the stomach. “I didn’t, I wouldn’t. Never. Oh, oh, no, please…” 

“You did this to me!” Rhett bares his bloodstained teeth in what could be a grin and lifts his arms towards Link as if to grab hold of him. “Come here, Link. I’ll get you back. I’ll show you what you did…”

Link chokes on a sob and tries to crawl further away, but his limbs won’t move. He can’t move at all, actually. Rhett’s head flops down to the side grotesquely as he gets up on all fours to crawl after Link, crawl _over_ him, a huge weight on Link’s chest. Cold dead hands clutch his shoulders and fingernails dig into Link’s flesh, tearing it open, fingers worming their way through the skin and muscle and tearing through veins. Then one hand withdraws and starts pawing at Link’s torso. Going for his heart. To rip it right out of his chest!

“NO!” Link rolls over and grabs a gun. Where it came from, he didn’t know or care. He just aims it at Rhett’s chest and pulls the trigger. Rhett’s body slumps on top of him and it feels like Link is dying, too. How can he live without his best friend? What had he done? God! He was a monster! Link can’t breathe, can’t move. Dead weight on his chest. So heavy, pinning him down. Oh please, just let me breathe! he yells, but the words don’t pass his lips. 

Link finally manages one deep, shuddering breath and when he opens his eyes he’s awake in his room. For real this time. He’d been crying in his sleep and his face feels crusty. The blankets were so tangled that his legs were practically tied together, and the whole bed was damp with sweat. 

Terrified of falling asleep again but too exhausted to move, Link curls up in a ball and pulls the blanket up to his chin. He stares at the ceiling, willing himself to be calm, until finally he can’t stand it anymore and his eyes slip closed on their own accord.

In the morning, he forgets everything. When he wakes, he vaguely remembers how scared he’d been, but dreams turn to dust in the light of day and he hops out of bed feeling a little sweaty, but totally normal.

What a nightmare, though! Link remembers a woman who smelled of gardenias, and of fighting with Rhett. Something about Rhett being angry. There’d been a lot of hatred…fear and hatred. The harder he thinks about it, the faster the details slip away. It doesn’t matter, really. It was just a silly dream and it’s all over now.

_You’re not wanted here…_

A flash of Rhett’s head dangling from a limp neck, dead eyes fixed on Link, crawling towards him on gangly legs that don’t move like human legs should.

He almost gets the chills, but quickly relaxes again. It’s so beautiful outside and he wants to get the day started. As such a routine person, Link is used to feeling a little weird whenever he wakes up in an unfamiliar place, especially when he wakes up alone. Waking up without Christy is never Link’s idea of a good morning. 

It’s easy to dismiss his unease by blaming it all on homesickness. Link brushes his teeth in the bathroom sink, systematically as always. He takes a shower and nothing strange happens in the clean white tub. Hot steam relaxes every sore muscle in his body, making him groan deeply in relief and pleasure. The water washes away the sweat and the fear and all the bad memories and soon Link’s mind is full of more realistic concerns, like making food and calling his family back home.

**

“I had the freakiest dream,” Link announces at breakfast. He pours milk over his Mini-Wheats and sits across from Rhett, who is absorbed in a John Wyndham book, a tiny white flower-patterned teacup filled with coffee in his big hand. He hasn’t spiked his hair or changed out of his plaid pyjama pants and Link thinks he looks boyish and adorable.

“Really? You never remember your dreams.” Rhett puts down the book he’s reading and pushes it aside.

“I didn’t say I _remembered_ it. I just know it was scary.”

“I didn’t sleep too well either,” admits Rhett. “I think I freaked myself out a little reading all the paranormal stuff. I mean, I didn’t see or hear anything, but I kept waiting for it to happen.”

“What would you have done if something actually had shown up?”

“Pooped myself,” Rhett answers promptly, and Link nearly chokes on his cereal as he laughs hard. 

“That’s some good morning conversation there, Rhett. Thank you for that image.”

“You started it. So what do you remember about your dream?”

A bird trills just outside the window cheerfully, distracting Link. “Oh gosh, I…I remember something about us fighting, I think. It was pretty bad.”

“Did I win?” 

“Nah, I think I did. I think I killed you, man.” Link tries to bring up the memory again and gets a brief flash of aiming a gun at Rhett’s chest, feeling fear, rage and disgust all at once. _The souls of the damned breed monsters from fear._

“You dream about killing me?” Rhett puts on a hurt face, but it’s just a joke. “C’mon, Link, that’s not nice! I dreamed about you and I riding on the back of a purple parade float while being taught how to shear sheep, and you dream about murdering me?”

“Well, mine’s less weird!”

“Shearing sheep isn’t weird, Link. Maybe we were gonna make blankets,” Rhett’s eyes widen, sparkling with good humour, and he taps Link on the arm as if to emphasize some fantastic idea.

“Whatever, man,” Link tries to contain his smile so he can take another bite of food, and doesn’t succeed. “Did you write it down?”

“Nah. Forgot my dream journal.”

“That sucks.” Link notices that the kettle is still steaming. “You brought instant coffee, didn’t you? Where is it?” He makes grabby motions with his hands until Rhett points at the cupboard over the stove.

“Can you gimme a refill while you’re over there?” Rhett hands him the hilariously small cup. “Don’t laugh. I guess old china tea sets are better for the atmosphere than regular mugs. It’s all we have.”

Link’s lips twitch but he doesn’t giggle. He just fills Rhett’s cup with the hot water and a spoonful of instant coffee. There’s raw sugar packets scattered on the counter, pocketed from a Starbucks, and he adds one along a dash of milk.

“Thanks.” Rhett takes the cup from Link and blows on the steaming liquid before taking a tentative sip. “What do you say we check out the village today?”

“Sure!” Link replies immediately, too fast. Rhett’s eyebrow raises a little, and Link quickly adds, “I um, want to stop at the grocery store.” 

“We can do that,” Rhett replies easily, still looking at Link oddly. “There’s a bookstore I want to look at. And we could go down to the beach after if you want.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Link is relieved. He sips his boiling hot coffee, trying to look calm and collected, and yelps when he burns the roof of his mouth.

“Ow! Shit!” The curse word pops out of his mouth, surprising even himself.

“Coffee tends to be hot, Link,” Rhett notes, lips twitching. He’s joked before that Link could probably find a way to burn himself on cold milk. “How many times does this have to happen before you learn? We need to get you a dang sippy-cup or something.”

Link laughs, breaking the pocket of tension that had seemingly bubbled up between them out of nowhere. When the movement makes the cup tilt dangerously he almost instinctively slurps his coffee again, making Rhett laugh too. 

“Oh, goodness, I’m an idiot,” exclaims Link, feeling his face flush a bit.

“Let’s hurry up and get outta here before you hurt yourself!”

They head out around nine thirty, when they’re both caffeinated and dressed. As soon as the house is out of sight, Link feels a million times better, and it’s like the burnt patch in his mouth heals almost right away. The sunlight and fresh country air remind him of his childhood summer vacations in North Carolina. Rolling down his window, Link leans his face into the breeze and sighs in contentment.

Rhett glances to the side and gives Link a little grin like he’s thinking about the same darn thing. “Man, we needed a vacation. I love being out in the country. It’s so _green_ here, Link.”

“I like how clean the air is up here,” Link offers, gazing out dreamily across an enormous valley filled with foliage. Mountains rise high in the background. On the other side, the ocean appears as they round a bend in the road.

“It beats LA for sure. Good weather, too. The forecast said there’d be more rain this week.”

Link starts to unwrap a weird coconut-flavoured paleo snack bar and Rhett reaches over to smack it out of his hands playfully. “No way, man, those things give you the farts.”

“They do not!” Link wrestles with Rhett’s arm as they crawl almost to a stop behind a huge RV turning off into one of the small side roads. 

“When I said we needed a vacation, I didn’t mean a repeat of our Death Valley trip.”

“Oh, my gosh, never again. You know it’s bad when you even make yourself gag.”

“Don’t you touch that bar. Don’t do it!” 

Link crams the entire thing in his mouth and looks at Rhett triumphantly with bulging cheeks. Then he coughs and sprays wet crumbs all over himself.

Rhett starts laughing so hard that he struggles to focus on his driving. When they stop again for a couple of geese crossing the road he takes the chance to double over, laying his forehead on the wheel as he laughs himself hoarse. He’s clearly having a great time. 

Link suddenly feels a twinge of guilt. It’s wonderful here. What’s been wrong with him? Why can’t he just relax and have fun like Rhett? Driving past the stunningly beautiful scenery of southern coastal Oregon, all verdant forests and rolling hills, the idea of restless spirits and haunted buildings seems stupid and insignificant. When they’ve made it into town, Christy texts him a cheery ‘Good morning’ and a short, happy little summary of the kids’ activities over the past few days. Link’s heart swells at the thought of his perfect wife and perfect kids waiting for him to come home.

The tension in Link’s shoulders and neck disappears and he feels fifteen pounds lighter. Soon, he’s laughing and joking with Rhett again like they’d done the whole day back in San Francisco, high on life and each other’s company.

**

Coming back to the house feels like he’s being thrown back in jail after a short taste of freedom. Link falls silent for the last leg of their drive, suddenly aware of the light sunburn he’s gotten on his upper arms and the back of his neck. The skin there is itchy and tight. He thinks he might have rubbed off whatever protective layer formed over the burn in his mouth. It feels like he’s developed an open raw patch there. His tongue moves over it restlessly, making it worse.

Rhett keeps talking animatedly, oblivious to Link’s discomfort, but soon the lack of response makes him go quiet, too.

“Are you okay?” Rhett asks as they pull up to the house. The engine cuts off and so does the faint background music of some classic ‘90s rock song. Maybe Third Eye Blind. Whatever it was, it was the only thing keeping Link’s anxiety at bay. The sudden silence in the car feels anticlimactic, like something’s going to jump out at them as soon as they open their car doors.

“Yeah,” Link says listlessly. 

“Well…okay.” Rhett clearly decides not to push it. “Let’s take it easy for a while. Go upstairs, call Christy or somethin’.”

Seized with a sudden, frantic aversion to being alone – not that he likes being alone to begin with – Link shakes his head vehemently. “No, it’s okay. Let’s work on somethin’.” He doesn’t want to bother Christy at supper time. She’ll just worry when she hears the anxiety in his voice, and she has enough on her plate trying to look after the house and kids by herself. He hurries to keep up with Rhett’s long, easy strides as they head up to the front door of the house.

“Naw. Not in the mood to work right now. Let’s go up to the attic,” Rhett declares suddenly.

“The attic?”

“Yeah. Apparently it’s full of cool old stuff.”

Link thinks of spiders and mice or even rats, none of which are ‘cool’. “Is this for a project? You wanna film something again?”

“Nope. No camera. Just me and you. We can’t work all the time, right?”

Maybe it won’t be so bad. Rhett’s company will keep his spirits up. “Sure,” Link says, and forces a smile onto his face. He makes himself hold that expression as he steps out of the car and fights the urge to peer nervously at the trees for things lurking in the shadows. Rhett doesn’t notice. “Lead the way.”

Rhett has clearly explored the house more thoroughly than Link had. He sets his bags on the kitchen counter and motions for Link to follow. It’s quite a journey from one end of the house to the other. They ascend two short staircases and end up in a room Link’s never seen before. There’s a tiny narrow doorway at its far end.

“See, up here.”

The door squeaks a little and it’s pitch black inside, but Rhett reaches one long arm in and yanks a chain pull cord to fill the small staircase with light. It’s not all spiderwebby and nasty like Link thought. It’s not as clean as the bedrooms and living area, but it makes him feel better to know that someone took the time to run a duster over everything recently. It’s stupid, but it would make him nervous if the attic had been literally abandoned for years. 

Link is irritated with himself. _Stop being such a baby. Man up._ “Have you been up here already?” he asks Rhett in a neutral tone.

“I opened the door and looked in just enough to see all the junk, and to make sure that it was clean.”

“Oh, good. After those dock spiders…I guess I was thinkin’ rats might be up here or something.”

“When you run a place as a rental, you have to pass inspections, I think. I mean, they charge a lot for this place. They can’t just let it fall apart and get infested with stuff and then ask for all this money to have gothic literature club weekends or whatever here.”

“I knew that. This house is just creepy.” Link doesn’t mean to sound whiny and he hates the way his voice comes out. He pushes ahead of Rhett and climbs the creaking staircase, the taller man right behind him. At the top he stops, eyes wide. “Whoa.” 

“I know, right? Can you believe how big it is?”

The attic is endless. Link can’t even see the far wall. It’s not bright by any means, but there are two windows that let in enough natural light to illuminate everything decently enough. Every corner of the massive space is crammed with stuff – old furniture, newspapers, books, shelves, a wardrobe with a broken door filled with clothing that looks straight out of some historical movie. 

“How is all of this still here?” Link can’t help but exclaim. “Wow!”

“Look at that headline,” Rhett points to a scrap of newspaper hanging out of a thick leather-bound sort of binder. “ _’Arizona Territory Becomes 48th U.S. State.’_ ”

“When was that, like 1910?” Link reaches for it, his curiosity overcoming his bad mood. 

Rhett grabs his arm. “Careful! It’ll probably fall apart.”

“You’re right, jeeze. Sorry. But hey, look at that…That desk, look at what’s carved on it!” It was a childish inscription: _Abby J. 1898._

Rhett bends to look. “Oh, cool. Looks like an old school desk. There probably weren’t any actual schools in the area for a while and they taught kids at home.”

Rhett has good ideas, Link thinks to himself after about an hour of careful rummaging. Soon he feels almost normal again. He chuckles to himself, thinking of the weird feelings of dread he’d attributed to the house itself. Here he is, in one of the most stereotypically creepy parts of the house, surrounded by dead people’s possessions, and it’s not the least bit scary or morbid. All that was wrong with him was a bad night’s sleep – and probably some grumpiness from not having the company of his family or the comfort of his own soft bed with his wife cuddled up to him at night. His anxiety is his own worst enemy sometimes.

“Hey, it’s kinda dry up here,” Rhett breaks the short silence. “I’m gonna go get a bottle of water. Want one?”

“Sure, Rhett. Thanks.” Link barely hears. He’s absorbed in admiring all the forgotten refuse. Such a beautiful grandfather clock, and it looks like it still works. And the old painted reed-and-grass rocking chair with the name Pacific Coast Rattan Co. stamped on it – it must pre-date the first world war. Maybe Rhett should bring the camera after all. This was like being in a museum!

There are lots of closed trunks and boxes. Link finds an old Confederacy uniform in one trunk and remembers how the original owners of the mansion were from Louisiana. Was it a family heirloom, or did the man who wore this actually fight for the Confederacy and later move west to this house, living beneath this very roof? And why did it lie here, completely forgotten? Surely it’s worth money, surely past guests and owners have raided this attic for treasures…

Gosh, it’s warm, Link thinks to himself. Right on cue, a bead of sweat drips down his forehead and clings to his eyebrow. Irritated, he brushes it away and bends over an intricate wooden doll with many-jointed limbs. The face looks hand-carved. It had probably been painted too but it’s faded away with age. How many generations of children had played with it? How many years had those kids been dead now?

It’s stiflingly hot in here. Smoggy like back home in LA. He needs to open a window or something. Maybe they don’t even open, though. Link’s lungs feel thick and clogged, so he takes off his black zip-up jacket and tosses it in the direction of the door. A stack of newspapers catches his attention and he eagerly inspects one, looking for the date on it. This house dates back to the late 1800s. Wouldn’t it be cool to find an article on the Titanic sinking or the assassination of Franz Ferdinand? Unfortunately, the pages are so yellowed and dry that he can’t make out too many words. Or is it his vision? His glasses fogging up or something?

He blinks to clear his eyes, but it doesn’t work. It’s his vision that’s funny. Blurry, almost, like he wasn’t wearing glasses at all. He gasps, and his lungs burn in protest. Oh gosh, he can’t breathe. Why can’t he breathe? Link’s eyes go wide as he rubs his chest and coughs, hoping to dislodge something from his windpipe and solve the problem. It doesn’t work. Alarms go off in his head as he mentally lists a myriad of medical emergencies. Heart attack, stroke, collapsed lung – no, none of those can be right, there’s no other symptoms. Is this an anxiety attack?

The terror increases. He still can’t breathe right. Where’s Rhett? Where is his phone? If something happens, he doesn’t even know how long it would take for an ambulance to get here. Too long. Fresh air. He’s got to get fresh air. Link turns blindly and staggers towards the door to the staircase.

It’s locked. How in the world – oh, Rhett must have locked it behind him, accidentally. Link’s short breaths become even shallower and he tries to contain his panic even as claustrophobia adds to his fear. He’s trapped. Trapped in the attic. No escape. Can’t breathe. 

“RHETT!” Link screams as loudly as he can, which isn’t very loudly with such little air in his lungs. He pounds on the door, breath coming in short gasps. It’s starting to hurt to breathe, with his throat feeling so dry and raw. Nothing is making sense. He’s sucking in so much air and it doesn’t seem to be _doing_ anything. It’s like he’s breathing into a plastic bag. The attic is well-ventilated, he knows that, there’s just no reason this should be happening at all.

“God, help me! Rhett! Rhett…” His voice gives out and he’s left mute, fingernails scrabbling uselessly at the door. The panic is making his hands shake so badly he can barely grasp the doorknob. This is surely the most frightening thing he’ll ever experience. He feels hot and yet his hands are starting to go numb. Icy. His brain feels numb, too. As his vision darkens at the edges, he glances wildly around himself. For a moment he thinks he seems looming shadows forming into beasts, shuffling towards him. Not beasts – people. They’re eager, eager for Link to give up and close his eyes and die. They want him. Nobody wants him here and so they’ll punish him.

_Your fear excites them._

He won’t give in. If he focuses his eyes on them, they disappear, only to reappear at the edges of his vision just waiting for their chance. The problem is, Link can’t look everywhere at once. It feels like he’s breathing through a straw but he manages to suck in another blessed lungful of air. Still, it’s not enough.

_the souls of the damned_

The woman from his dream, her voice keeps echoing in his mind. Link had somehow forgotten her in the morning along with the rest of his awful nightmares, but in his moment of absolute terror it’s all rushing back at once. The shadows seem to want to lean in and sniff hungrily at him like wild dogs as they dance around the corners of his field of vision.

– _breed monsters from fear._

A child is crying. In his state of confusion he thinks of his own kids. Who is it? Who’s hurting them? Why?! Link screams, a wordless strangled sound.

The noise cuts through the air and suddenly, with a great sucking noise, Link fills his lungs with oxygen. His head clears and the shadows disappear. Hallucinations. Oxygen-deprived hallucinations. The door was never locked. It _can’t_ lock, there’s no damned latch on it. Link collapses onto all fours, panting cool clean air. What in the world had just happened? 

Someone’s coming up the stairs slowly. _Rhett, oh, thank goodness._ Link coughs hard, clutching his stomach, composing himself. 

“What are you doing, Link?” The door opens and Rhett chuckles at the sight of him on the floor. “Some yoga poses?”

Link picks himself up and leans back on his knees. “I just…I…oh, gosh, Rhett, hold on. I’m a little dizzy.”

Rhett reaches out a hand to help him up. “You sure don’t like haunted houses, huh?” His face is bland and stupid. Link hates the way he’s smiling. He hates that Rhett is so happy with his dumb ideas of living here and making a project out of it. 

“Didn’t you hear me yell for you?” Link demands.

“Yeah. I thought you’d found something cool. I was a bit slow on the stairs. I don’t want to fall down and hurt my back again. It’s been actin’ up.”

“Glad to know you care about me so much.”

Rhett seems to take that as a joke because he starts to smile again. Link lashes out. “It’s not funny! Why can’t you ever take me seriously?”

“Whoa, man – ”

“You’re so damn selfish sometimes, you know that?”

That wipes the smile off Rhett’s face. Immediately Link feels disgusted with himself for his reaction. There was no way Rhett could know how terrified he’d been when there was nothing actually _wrong_ with him. He feels fine now, and the awfulness of his experience is already fading away from his memory. Now he just feels like an idiot. A cruel one.

Rhett’s holding an extra water bottle in his hand, like he’d promised, looking confused and uncertain. And Link had called him selfish.

“Link…hey, man, I didn’t mean to…”

“Not right now. Leave me alone.” Link wants to apologize, but he’s still so frustrated. He can’t bring himself to do it. All he can do is back away silently and slink down the stairs, back into his own room, feeling like he’s going to choke on the lump in his throat. 

Rhett doesn’t stop him.

**

Like most of their fights, it doesn’t last long. Link, red-faced and much calmer, wanders the main level of the house until he finds Rhett stretched out in an ancient dove-grey recliner in a tiny nook of a room facing the lake. His laptop is open and his brow is furrowed in concentration, one hand absentmindedly playing with his beard. 

“Hey,” Link says, lingering uncertainly by the door. Rhett’s eyes lift from the screen, not surprised to see him. “You busy?”

“Not so much anymore.”

“That’s, uh, good. I wanted to say sorry, man. For what I said in the attic…I didn’t mean it.”

“It’s okay,” Rhett says, a trifle uncomfortably. “That was just weird. It was so unlike you. What happened, anyway? Did you hurt yourself up there?”

The memory of the awful incident makes Link curl his lips into a small grimace. His rational mind doesn’t want to accept it as anything but his own anxious nature manifesting itself. After all, it had only lasted maybe two minutes, top. It seems foolish to try and tell Rhett what exactly had happened. 

“Let’s just forget about it,” offers Link. “It won’t happen again.”

“Okay,” Rhett’s voice softens and he raises his hands in a gesture of peace. “Nothin’ happened.”

“Right. Let’s get to work.”

“So, did you finish your notes?”

Link cringes. He had looked everywhere for the notes he’d written. Truth be told, he’d been so engrossed in his research on the brutal deaths in the house that he hadn’t even finished them. “Um. I can’t find them.” He’s such an organized person that losing track of things is almost traumatizing.

“You can’t find them? But – why didn’t you say so earlier?”

“I don’t know.” Link’s face burns and he feels like such a flake. But something was wrong with his laptop. Files were missing, programs were opening randomly, and his Internet connection fluctuated wildly while Rhett’s seemed to be just fine. “I think my computer ate them. I’m missing a bunch of stuff.”

“Oh,” is all Rhett says, frowning. “That, uh, sucks. Are we just gonna wing it?” He sounds so crestfallen. It was clear he was excited to film this bit. 

Link picks at a fingernail. “I think we can. Lets just forget the research stuff. It was boring anyway.”

“Uh, sure. Okay. So…” 

“So, lets get our pyjamas, get the camera, and build a dang pillow fort. You tell your story and I’ll tell mine and then we’ll try the Ouija board.” 

Rhett brightens a bit. “Okay. Have you ever used one of those things?”

“I hate board games enough already without trying one that wants to eat my soul.”

It’s not a great joke but Rhett chuckles anyway, determined to make peace. They both warm up as they prepare to film. Link’s smiles become genuine rather than forced. They have a good time building the blanket fort, dragging furniture around and making it sturdy and tall enough for both men to fit comfortably inside. The sheet and blanket from Rhett’s bed aren’t enough to complete the structure. A raid on one of the unused guest rooms produces enough to end up with quite a fort. They stuff the hard floor inside with couch cushions and pillows, which dissolves into an impromptu pillow fight that ends when one of the pillows actually bursts at the seams. 

Rhett laughs until he clutches his side in pain. “Why do you break everything you touch?”

“I didn’t break it!” Link complains indignantly. “Your big head did.”

“You had to hit me in the face ‘cause you were losing so bad.”

“Your arms are longer. You’ve got an unfair advantage.”

“Let’s just get in the fort before you make me hit you again,” Rhett grins cockily. “I won fair and square. No shots to the face, man. You’re disqualified.”

“Disqualified from what?”

“From the sleepover, man!”

They make sure the lighting angles into the entrance of the fort just right so that they’ll both be visible on screen if they lie down with their faces sticking out. Link, with a burst of energy and a desire to make up for his earlier performance, immediately takes the lead, exclaiming, “My wife and I saw a horror movie and what happened next…was more scary than anything in the film.”

“Let’s talk about that,” Rhett grins, stretching out his legs behind him. One of his feet bumps up against Link’s, and he nudges back affectionately. The first six minutes or so pass by normally, like any regular episode of Good Mythical Morning, except they’re lying on their stomachs instead of sitting at the good old GMM desk. Link feels more confident than he’s been in a long time. His story is drawing sincere wide-eyed looks and frequent exclamations from Rhett, and Rhett’s story about his oldest son Locke made Link laugh so hard that barely any noise came out.

“Okay, time to bust out the board, Linkster,” Rhett commands grandly, propping himself up on his elbows. “I get to go first.”

“All yours, brotha,” Link exaggerates his accent and looks at the camera cheekily, adjusting his glasses. “Things are about to get freaky in here! Now, as many of you might already know, a Ouija board is basically an alphabet written in big letters, with ‘no’ and yes’ in each upper corner here, and the numbers zero to nine beneath the letters, and ‘goodbye’ printed at the bottom. You take this thingy here – the planchette – and hold it lightly, and when you contact a spirit it guides your hands to letters or words to communicate. You’re supposed to end your session by saying goodbye every time so the contacted entity won’t hang around after.” 

Rhett studies the box carefully as Link lays the board down. “I’ve heard this is recommended for two or more people,” he says with a glance up at the camera. “’Do not attempt a session on your own, for physical and mental reasons’.”

“You’re lucky you have me,” Link quips, placing the planchette in the middle of the board and mentally calculating how visible it was onscreen. “You’ve gotta touch the planchette thing too, right? We both rest our fingertips on it.” Rhett nods and sets the box out of frame.

They both lightly grasp the big white planchette, smiling a bit at the ridiculousness of it. After a few seconds Rhett shoos Link’s hands away and shuffles closer so he’s centred in front of the board. “What should I ask it?”

“I was readin’ an article online about the craziest Ouija board stories,” Link tells the camera as Rhett silently focuses on his question with his tongue poked out a little. “You look ridiculous, by the way…anyway…” For the second time, Link leads the conversation as Rhett tries to communicate with the dead.

“Getting anywhere, Rhett?” Link pauses his story to ask, having heard the planchette slide around a few times.

“I dunno if I’m doing this because I want it to move so bad, or if it’s actually something else guiding my hand,” Rhett half-grins. “If I spell a word, I swear it’s not me doin’ it though. My mind is just focusing on the question.”

“What was your question?”

“I asked if something was there, and the thingy – ”

“The planchette,” Link over-pronounces the word.

“Yeah, that thing – kinda trembled. So I just assumed that meant yes, and then I just asked, _What is your name?_ ” Rhett repeats it out loud. The planchette skids to the side, towards the middle of the alphabet, and lands on the letter H. But that’s where it stays. “It did that the first time, too.”

“It’s name is H?”

“I guess so. Maybe it can’t spell. Can we call you…uh, Heath?”

“Heath,” Link repeats, a smile tugging at his lips. “Well, it’s not saying no…” Nothing happens for a few seconds, so Link reaches for the planchette instead. “All right, lemme try. I’ll re-ask the first question. Is there something here with us?” he asks loudly, looking directly at the camera with his fingers lightly resting on the planchette. 

“So I guess we’re back to lookin’ for a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer here,” Rhett tells the camera as Link closes his eyes and fixes a concentrated look on his face. “I never did get a real answer, so maybe that’s why my second question didn’t work.”

Link feels fidgety and his hands are shaking a bit to begin with, but he thinks he feels pressure coil around his knuckles. The planchette slides forward smoothly, quite unlike the unsure little jerks that Rhett was doing.

“No way!” Rhett exclaims. “You’re faking that. You’re faking it!”

“I am not!” Link exclaims, opening his eyes to peer at his progress. “Look, the ‘yes’ option is over there though. It wasn’t moving that way. So there’s not something here.”

“Case closed!” Rhett says triumphantly. “But wait, you said something, not someone. Maybe you offended it. You offended Heath, man.”

Link laughs. “You’re offending Heath by callin’ him Heath! What if it’s a girl, Rhett? What if it’s, uh…Heather?” He stops focusing and takes one hand off the planchette. “Maybe we should have just asked the most obvious question. Is this house haunted?”

The fingers of Link’s hand seize up suddenly and he pushes down involuntarily, moving sharply towards the upper left corner of the board. Pins and needles flood both of his hands. He opens his mouth to exclaim “What in the world – ” and then there’s a strange _fwoomph_ noise and everything goes pitch black. Link’s breath catches in his throat and he drops the planchette. One of his hands flails out blindly, reaching for Rhett. He’s ridiculously glad when Rhett catches his hand and grips it a little too hard. 

“Just a power outage, Rhett,” Link says in a carefully controlled voice. “It’s okay.” Carefully, he raises himself up on his knees to get into a sitting position. Beside him, the blankets rustle as Rhett goes the same. They don’t lose hold of each other’s hands.

“Oh, god,” Rhett’s voice is low and shaky. Then he chuckles as if to cover up his fear. “Gol _lee_ , that was some bad timing.”

“Ow – my hand!” Link tries to pull away from Rhett’s firm hold.

“Crap, sorry.” Rhett chuckles nervously and loosens his grip. “Guess I’m scared.”

“Is the camera still rolling?” Link wants to know.

“Yeah. I think I hit it with my elbow, though. I hope it’s okay. Jeeze, it’s pitch black, I can’t see a thing.”

“Me neither.” Link glares blindly into the blackness, urging his eyes to adjust. “Wait – the window. Look, that lighter patch over there…There’ll be a little light, when our eyes adjust.”

“Good, good. I, uh.” Rhett’s hand slides up to Link’s forearm. “Don’t mind me. I just wanna make sure you’re still next to me.”

Link nods as if Rhett can see him. He’s focused on trying to relax his eyes, open his pupils and absorb the miniscule amount of light from the stars outside. A shudder moves through his body when he thinks he hears that whispering sound again, like there’s something in the room with them. 

“Do you hear that?” he hisses at Rhett. 

“Don’t freak me out, man, I don’t hear anything.” 

Link perceives movement somehow and directs his gaze to the window again. Then he stares, dumbfounded. Thick black shapes, like huge fat slugs, are wriggling and slithering around the edges of the window. They move strangely, like the shadows he had hallucinated up in the attic. These don’t disappear when he focuses on them, though. One pokes out from the bottom of the windowpane and slides up against the glass, like it’s testing for a hole or crack. Link tries to keep his eyes open. Every time he blinks, he has to re-focus. Soon, his eyes are burning and he loses sight of the shadows.

“Rhett, do you see that? Look at the window!” There’s no way he’s imagining it. The shapes are huge and moving – sentiently. Link can only see them faintly in the light of the stars and crescent moon

“What? What are you looking at?”

“The shadows, man! Watch the shadows – see the movement – ”

“Link, calm down. There’s nothin’ there. I’m right here, okay?” Rhett’s lanky arm curves around Link’s shoulders and tugs him closer. Link doesn’t even think, just turns his head blindly and pushes his face into Rhett’s chest. He’s imagining things again, just like in the attic, and he doesn’t want to look anymore. The darkness is playing tricks on his eyes. If Rhett couldn’t see them, they weren’t there. The tall man had better eyesight than he did.

Rhett holds him lightly and strokes his back. “What did you see?” Rhett asks him, soothingly. Link exhales a puff of hot air into Rhett’s shirt and struggles to find something to say that won’t sound absolutely ridiculous. What’s he gonna say? He saw little shadow creatures, and now he needs to be held like a baby? 

The lights flick back on, almost casually, and both men jerk away from each other in surprise. A loud double-beep comes from the kitchen – the microwave resetting itself. There are no weird black shapes or anything else out of the ordinary. Just the same old room, and their pillow fort, and two men on the floor in their pyjamas.

Link lets go of the breath he was holding in a long, loud whoosh. “Oh, my goodness,” he murmurs, noticing the goose bumps all over his arms.

“The fans are gonna love that,” Rhett laughs suddenly and lightly punches Link’s shoulder with good humour. “What great timing!”

“Great timing?” Link can’t believe it. Rhett was acting like he’d enjoyed the terrifying episode. “You were totally scared, man!”

“Can you believe it? Oh, man. I bet they’ll think it was on purpose or something. I hope our reactions were genuine enough to convince some of ‘em that it was real.”

“That wasn’t fun for me, Rhett,” Link grits. “You’re not using that in the show!”

Rhett looks a little confused, and starts to smile like he thinks Link is just joking. “Man, you really were scared, huh?”

“We both were,” Link insists, hearing his jaw tic as he clenches it in frustration. “Why can’t you just admit it?”

The other man either doesn’t see or misinterprets the expression on Link’s face. “Don’t worry, Link. I won’t let the monsters get you.” 

Rhett isn’t being intentionally cruel. He can’t be. They always tease each other like this. Logically, Link knows that. Rhett had held him, comforted him. Now he’s just trying to make it into a joke for the viewers. Link doesn’t know why his words hit him so hard in the gut. Sometimes he hates that people perceive him as being a wuss. His control begins to waver, and then it snaps completely. He shoves Rhett away so hard that the tall man loses his balance and falls back on his elbows, wincing.

“What the – ”

“It’s not funny! You were scared too! You nearly broke my hand!”

“Whoa, man, I know!”

“It’s not just me, alright? I’m not a baby. I’m sick of being teased about not being as tough as you. I don’t need any more stupid comments on Youtube. Don’t I get enough shit for retching all the time?”

Rhett pulls himself back up into a sitting position and clamps his hands down on Link’s shoulders firmly. “Listen, Link. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay!” Link pulls away from the touch. 

“I’m sorry I was a jerk. You’re right, I was scared for a minute there. Anyone would’a been. And it’s not gonna be part of the episode.”

His eyes are so guileless, and a little downtrodden. Link feels the anger drain right back out of him as quick as it had come. He presses his lips together and takes a deep breath in through his nose. “Gosh. I – I’m so sorry. I don’t know what came over me.”

“I think we’re both homesick,” Rhett says gently. “There’s been a bit of tension in the air, huh?”

“I guess so.” Link feels ashamed of his behaviour. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, ‘course not, I was just surprised. I’m pretty darn familiar with your temper but that wasn’t like you at all.”

“I know. I guess I – I just don’t like it here, Rhett.”

“It was my idea. I knew you didn’t like haunted houses. Look – you just focus on having some fun and I’ll try to do most of the work. I feel bad, draggin’ you up here when you didn’t really want to go.”

“I did want to go. I just – the day we got here, I – ” 

He wants to open up and be completely honest about everything that’s going wrong. The bloody bathtub. The strangling panic attack in the attic. The feeling of being watched, the weird noises, the shadows slipping around the window. Furtively, Link wishes Rhett would just hold him tight and listen to everything with a straight face and a serious demeanor. Is it too much to ask? _Probably._

Instead, he looks up into Rhett’s worried eyes and lies right to his best friend’s face. “I had a fight with Christy.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.” Link wets his dry lips. He doesn’t have a lot of practice lying to Rhett. “I called her to check on the kids and we just ended up having an argument over something stupid. She wouldn’t answer my texts later and I guess I’ve just been on edge ever since.”

Rhett looks a bit relieved. “That explains it. I thought maybe you were mad at me. Well – you two never fight for long, right? She probably just misses you. We’ll stop somewhere on the way back and pick up a little somethin’ for her, and I’ll get Jessie a little surprise, too. Maybe we can get them a trip to a spa or something, so they can have their alone time away from the kids when we’re all back in Burbank.”

“Right,” Link says numbly. “That’s a good idea.”

“Don’t worry.” Rhett claps him on the back. “You’ll patch things up with her. And we can still have a good time here. You just let me take care of things, alright brother?”

Link nods, afraid Rhett will see the lie on his face. “Okay.”

“Things will get better. You’ll see.”

“Thanks, man.” Link makes himself smile. “Why don’t we try filming a better ending for that bit? We’ll find somewhere logical to cut it off just before the lights go out.”

Rhett agrees, and the finished video is as cute and friendly as any Good Mythical Morning they’ve ever done. The ease with which Rhett accepts his lie makes Link’s heart feel like it’s being squeezed too tight. 

Link carefully resets all the digital clocks in the house and finds a few candles to put in the main rooms, just in case the power flickers out again. He still feels bad about lying to Rhett – and worse about actually shoving him, what in the world was he thinking? – but he’s not ready to try and explain how he’s been having hallucinations that are making him feel like he’s on a bad acid trip. The more he thinks about it, the more he finds logical reasons for everything, making him feel sharply critical about his immediate reactions of fear and panic. 

Nightmares aren’t unusual for someone sleeping in a strange place. The thing in the attic could have been a claustrophobic reaction – the ceiling was pretty low up there, and maybe being alone just made his head go a little weird. Anxiety attacks weren’t uncommon and Link was an anxious person by nature. It’s not like he’s seeing Casper the Friendly Ghost floating around. He’s not seeing ghosts at all. 

For the most part, the house is fine. Link can be in his room alone and isn’t afraid of getting up at night to pee or to go get a glass of water. It’s not like he’s whining in fear and hiding under the blankets. He’s adventurous, and he _does_ like the house’s grandeur and history. The fans seem to like their new endeavour, and it’s nice to be doing something so completely different.

“It’s scaled down,” he explains to Rhett as they lounge in front of his laptop, watching an old episode of Game of Thrones. Rhett had insisted Link get caught up on the show, since he’d liked the books so much. Link didn’t want to deny his friend anything after the way he’d behaved earlier. It’s interesting, and well-cast, but not close to the epic proportions of the novels. “We keep getting bigger and bigger, and working with more people, but sometimes I think the older fans like it the way it used to be. Just me and you.”

“Mmm,” Rhett folds his legs and adjusts the pillow supporting his back. “We’re getting great feedback. And it’s nice to feel like you’re havin’ a break but still getting stuff done. I miss my kids plenty, but dang, it’s kinda fun to just be hangin’ out with you again, like our college days.”

Link watches someone die onscreen, his heart thumping a little harder. A brief flash of nostalgia hits him as he remembers what it was like to be the most important person in Rhett’s life, and vice versa. Now they both have families and bigger responsibilities, and just as Link talks to Christy more often than he does to Rhett, it’s the same with Rhett and Jessie. He’s never been jealous, exactly – but sometimes he misses the simple companionship of his one best friend in the world. 

He wonders what it would be like if they had just had each other, in every way. Hadn’t gotten married, hadn’t had kids – but those are dangerous thoughts. Link pushes them away.

“We had some good times, man,” is all he says to Rhett, softly. Rhett turns his head to the side to give Link an understanding look, and they sink into an amiable silence for the remainder of the episode. Something about this moment makes Link feel suddenly, intensely sad. As if it was the last time they would be this content together. But why would that be so? They have years and years ahead of them, endless time to spend with each other. Stupid thoughts. Link glances at Rhett’s face and lets his eyes travel down his body. Dangerous thoughts. Push them down.

“I’m pretty beat,” Rhett declares when the theme music signals the end of the show. He stretches his arms over his head until something pops and he grimaces. “You hear that? Golly, I’m gettin’ old.” He twists at the waist like he’s trying to crack his back.

“How’s your back doin’?” Link asks him, trying not to stare at the peek of exposed belly where Rhett’s shirt hikes up.

“Oh, it’s fine. Better than usual, actually. The long drive made it act up some, but I’m good now. We ain’t what we used to be, huh?” He yawns.

Link yawns too, at the sight. His eyes feel a little dry from staring at the screen for so long. “Guess not,” he agrees, pushing up his glasses to rub at them. His eyelids feel so thick and heavy. “Wow, I’m more tired than I thought. I think I’ll grab a glass of water and hit the hay too.”

Rhett hoists himself up on his bed and falls back against the mattress with a little groan of relief. “Goodnight, Link.”

“’Night,” he calls down the stairs as he ascends to his lonely bedroom, trying to shake off the sense of impending dread nagging at the corners of his mind.


	2. Discord

Link’s breath puffs out in little white clouds that stream behind him as he runs as fast as he can down the hallways of the mansion, the sound of his hoarse, gasping breaths echoing in his ears. He can’t seem to find the front door, or the kitchen, or his bedroom – any familiar refuge would do. All the doors he’s tried lead to identical hallways, the same carpet, the same floral wallpaper and iron wall sconces with flickering candles. It’s a terrifying maze in here. Desperate, Link keeps turning, keeps moving forward, opening door after door. Soon, the doors start to open themselves. They flap around, blowing wind and dust everywhere, like there’s a tornado raging through the mansion. A horrible sense of isolation fuels his sense of urgency.

When Link chances a glance behind him, he notices that the candles are going out one by one. Panic constricts his throat like a garrote – it’s coming. It eats the light of the candles, the guiding beacons of safety. It wants to consume him, too. Stay ahead of them. Keep going, keep running. Never stop running. _Lily, Lincoln, Lando. Christy. Rhett._ Link chants the names of his loved ones over and over in his head. He’s got to stay alive and fight, for their sake if not his own.

But it doesn’t matter how fast he runs or where he goes. The steady thumping footfalls of whatever is chasing him just keep getting louder and louder. He has to find Rhett and get out of here, before – 

_Liiink…_

– before something awful consumes them both. But he’s losing ground rapidly. Ahead of him, the corridor warps and lengthens, and Link watches in horror as the door at the far end zooms further and further away. The muscles in his legs are tiring. Can he make it? Keep going, don’t stop. Can’t stop. 

_Please, mister,_ a plaintive little boy’s voice calls from above him. _Please, help, help me, I can’t get out, I can’t –_

Plumes of silver smoke spiral upwards from each extinguished candle, a morbid countdown to death. He puts on a fresh burst of speed, but the door keeps jumping forward. 

_I can’t BREATHE IN HERE!_

Link trips and falls hard on his knees. Laughter erupts from all around him, terrible and somehow childish. All along the hallway, doors begin to swing open and slam closed in a terrible cacophony. Link puts his hands over his ears, wincing at the noise, until he thinks he hears another sound, so faint. It sounds like Christy, but her voice is cracked and broken like she’s in pain. His stomach does a backflip.

_CAN’T BREATHE CAN’T BREATHE CAN’T GET OUT –_

“SHUT UP!” Link screams. “Christy! Where are you?” He struggles to his feet but falls again, knees turning to jelly. Gritting his teeth in determination, he begins to crawl blindly down the hallway towards the sound of his wife’s voice. Faster now, faster, ignore the chafing pain. He must look ridiculous, crawling like a baby, too useless to stand and run even to save his wife. The giggling becomes more derisive. His audience seems to find his pain and humiliation funny. “Where the fuck is she?!” he yells behind him to dead air. “Help me! Please!” Something – a foot? – catches him in the ass and he falls forward again to more wild screams of laughter. Link groans into the carpet, fingers scrabbling weakly at the floor as he tries to pick himself up.

_Get out, you fool! You’re not wanted here. Can’t you feel it?_

_This isn’t a good place. Your fear excites them. The souls of the damned –_

_It’s too late for him already, he can’t leave. They won’t let him. They like him now._

The thumping gets louder. Link’s heartbeat does the same, and he manages to raise himself up on all fours again. His body aches with exertion. It’s coming, it’s closer. But he can’t run, he can’t even stand, and he has to find Christy. He did hear her, didn’t he? What are they doing to her? Terror gnaws relentlessly at his brain and makes it hard to think straight. The voices floating all around him aren’t helping either. Are they coming from – 

_Please…Please, mister!_

_Help us! Oh, help us!_

– the vents? Or inside the various rooms, behind the wildly swinging doors? That he can’t see anyone is no comfort. Link feels cornered by a presence that seems to be everywhere at once. It pushes at his eyes, his nose, his ears, wanting to get inside him and consume him. Pressure, so much pressure. His head feels like it’s in a vise, like some medieval torture method.

Hatred, fear, confusion. Somewhere, two gunshots ring out in quick succession. A pause, and a final gunshot. Something heavy hits the floor. The sound of water running, filling a clean white bathtub. The body of a young girl floats by on a strange serene river, right through the house. Her skin has been leached of all colour and she’s starting to bloat. The smell of death is atrocious and Link shrinks back in horror as she drifts by. She was brunette at first, but now the colour is fading from her hair, too, and she’s actually blonde. A very familiar blonde. Older than he’d first thought. That face – beneath the bloating – oh, Jesus, no – 

“Christy,” he groans, “Oh, please no, please, God, not her, not her!”

A deep voice, reverberating all around him as if the entire house is speaking: _Not her. Just you._

When he looks back down at the body, he cries out in anguish. Now it’s Lily, his beautiful, daughter, horrendously bloated and disfigured. He blinks, and it becomes Lando, his face purple and drawn in pain. A trick, that’s all it is, a horrible, awful trick…Something here wants to break him down and hurt him in the most brutal ways possible. And it’s so…terribly… _good_ at it. Sobs wrack his chest as he keels over, completely ruined. “No,” he begs. “Make it stop, I can’t stand it.”

Now there are cold hands grabbing at him, pulling at him from all directions, clutching his hair and sliding inside his shirt and seizing his ankles, so many hands, but they don’t feel like hands at all. Desperately, he reaches inside himself, finding his strength to fight. Link snarls and twists like a trapped beast caught in a net.

Then the bottom drops out of the hallway and Link is falling, falling into emptiness, hands reaching out uselessly for something to save him…

Shuddering, Link rolls over in bed and registers the feeling of the mattress beneath his body. He briefly opens his eyes to see a malevolent rictus grin on a huge black shape that nearly fills the entire room. It hovers over him as shadowy tentacles descend to envelop his body. Detached, Link watches one slide up his stomach and prod at his neck. Disgusting. Link closes his eyes again, trying hard to find his mental footing. Exhaustion makes his brain and body ache, like he’d just run a marathon. How unusual, the clarity of this dream. If he didn’t know better, he’d say he was really awake. What is this thing doing? Eating him? He can’t feel anything. Thank god you can’t feel pain in dreams.

_Go back to sleep, Link._

He does, his brow smoothing, forgetting his misery for the time being.

**

Rhett was wrong when he said things would get better. After that brief interlude, things only get worse. It seems like the air itself is beginning to vibrate with conflict. 

Whenever Link walks down a hallway, the noise of his feet echoes and bounces off the twisting walls like there’s someone constantly walking behind him. He hates it. He always feels like he’s being watched, and too often he thinks he sees dark shapes gliding at the edges of his vision, slipping away when he tries to look at them.

The nightmares are unbearable. And any time he goes to lay down or rest, he’ll just be drifting off to sleep when it starts to feel as though something is lying on top of him, restricting his breath. He’s always confused, always jumpy. He keeps finding bruises on his skin and can’t remember where they came from. Is he sleepwalking? Is he just extra clumsy, or forgetful? 

Worst of all, he’s constantly snapping at Rhett, or being sulky to the point of provoking Rhett into snapping at him. Every time it happens, he feels entirely justified in his behaviour. Only when he’s alone, replaying the conversation in his head, does he realize how unreasonable he’s being. Rhett only ever tries to help, or tries to step back and avoid the drama. And Link just keeps being an asshole. He knows it.

Rhett is the only one working. Though he’d offered to take the lead on the project, Link doubts he meant he wanted to do the entire damn thing on his own. Rhett writes, he researches, he does all the talking on camera and confers by phone with the crew back home whenever he can. Link does nothing. It’s only making their strained friendship worse but Link can’t bring himself to be excited or useful. The thumps and bangs of pipes in the walls make his heart race and he feels like he’s constantly waiting for something to jump out at him. Old houses are stupid. They’re not charming.

“Why are you being like this?” Rhett asks him over dinner. “Link, you know I love you, but it’s really difficult to be your friend right now.”

It’s very simple. He hates it here. He’s a huge baby and he knows it. He’s a liar, a horrible friend, and apparently, a little crazy. If only things were better. He’d ask Rhett to wrap things up early and leave. But there’s so much work to be done and Rhett’s struggling to finish it all himself – and, despite that, he’s still having fun. From the bedroom upstairs – he always leaves the door open when he can – Link hears him talking animatedly to Jessie on the phone, carefully not mentioning Link or the problems they’ve been having. Every time he sees Link after they spend more than an hour apart, Rhett greets him with a smile and tries to give him another chance. 

Link knows he doesn’t deserve Rhett’s friendship or forgiveness. Really, what he deserves is a punch to the face. Scary house or no, Link is a grown man, and he needs to stop being so sensitive and immature. Too bad it’s not as easy as it sounds.

**

Later, alone in his room, Link curls up on his bed and tries to call his wife. Rhett isn’t speaking to him. His last words were, “I’m not talking to you if you’re gonna be like this. Go cool off and come back when you’re ready to be civil.”

He’s not used to these long silences. Link’s body feels empty and there’s a lump in his throat. If he could only bring himself to apologize…but Rhett’s heard far too many apologies to believe him this time. There’s no point. Link shivers; the evening was getting cool again and his room was uncomfortably chilly. He ought to figure out where the drafts are coming from. He tugs his blanket over his lap, crosses his legs, and presses his icy toes against the warmer skin of his calves, managing to get somewhat comfortable.

The phone rings and rings with no response. After the fourth ring Link knows nobody is going to answer. Christy’s sweet Southern drawl, telling him all about life back home in Burbank, would be just the thing to distract him from his self-loathing. After five more rings, he hangs up with a sigh and a sinking feeling. He misses his house. He misses his family. He misses _normalcy_. It’s so lonely in here. The door is open, but he can’t hear Rhett at all. Rhett liked being outside on evenings like this even with the cool temperatures. He was probably sitting out back, reading or working. 

Link flicks a finger over his screen to send a text instead. _Hey, honey. I know it’s late, but I miss you. I need to talk. Call me?_ He hits send, and his words float there on the screen in cyberspace for a few long minutes. He leans back, looks up, and begins counting the individual whorls of the textured plaster ceiling until he notices the little bubble of text that tells him Christy is typing back. Eager, Link straightens up and waits.

_Not right now. Too much going on. Trying to cook dinner._

_I wish I could be there to help,_ Link texts back immediately, feeling a surge of homesickness. He wonders what his kids are doing, and what sort of crazy adventures his family is having without him. _Can we talk later? It’s not urgent, but it’s important._

_Is something wrong?_

The words are perfectly neutral, but for some reason Link reads Christy’s message in her exasperated tone, the one she uses when the kids are really pushing her buttons. Is she mad at him, too? It’s a ridiculous idea. Why would she be mad? It’s just his own tension and feelings of inadequacy twisting everything into a personal attack. Link hunches his shoulders unconsciously. _Kind of. Rhett and I are having a bit of a fight. I don’t know why but we’ve just been so weird around each other lately. It’s throwing me off balance._

_So? Go talk to him._

The atmosphere of their conversation hangs suspended in the air. Link isn’t sure, but he interprets the words as being cold and irritated. _I’ve tried. We always end up arguing. I feel bad because he’s doing so much of the work and I keep slacking off. I think that’s why he’s mad._

_Well, you need to be working together. You guys are a team, right?_

_It’s been hard. I’ve felt weird since I came here. Probably homesick. I’ve never liked haunted houses. I haven’t been sleeping well at night. I wish I could have you next to me._

_What, so you think the house really is haunted?_

Link stares dumbly at the screen. That was sarcasm, he was sure of it now, along with a cold disregard for his attempt at being sweet. He can’t think of anything to say, and soon the bubbles that indicate Christy typing pop up again. It seems like an eternity before the new message appears.

_Why did you even agree to go if you’re going to be a big baby about everything? No wonder Rhett’s mad at you._

Link’s chest hurts. His heart feels like it’s being grasped and squeezed tightly by a cold hand. _I didn’t say the house was haunted. It’s just the lack of sleep or something. Makes me short tempered._

_If you’re the problem, why are you whining to me? What can I do about it?_

_Why are you being such a fucking bitch?_ Link types furiously in response, his temper flaring up fast like gasoline poured on a fire. He hits send and immediately feels horrified. He’s never called Christy a bitch, not ever. It was justified, he tries to tell himself, but the nausea rolling in his stomach and the shame he feels indicate otherwise. The phone almost slips from his hands as he tries to hit the call button, wanting – no, _needing_ to apologize. He feels like a – _the souls of the damned breed –_ monster. It rings once, and then cuts off. Numb, he pulls the phone away from his ear and looks back at their text conversation. He sees Christy typing for a long time before her answer finally pops up on the screen. 

_How dare you?? You’ve never been the man you promised you’d be when I married you, but you just crossed a line. I told you I was busy. You tell me you’re sitting around doing nothing and act like it’s a big mystery why you’re not having fun or getting along with Rhett. Is it really so hard to grow up and help work on this stupid entertainment company you made me leave my home and family and move across the whole country for?_

_Christy, I love you, I’m so sorry. Please call me. Please. I need you._ Dear god, what has he done? She’d never complained about the move before. They were happy in California. They had been from the start. 

_No. Don’t bother me. I’m happy here without you. Nobody wants you here anyway._

Snarling, in a sudden and manic sort of rage, Link picks up his phone in trembling hands and rears back as if to smash it against the floor. He stops himself at the last minute, breathing hard. What the heck is he doing? Breaking stuff won’t do anything but make Rhett and Christy hate him even more. Instead, he throws off the blanket and paces the length of the room. When he doesn’t calm down, he aims a punch at the wall without thinking and grunts at the pain that lances through his fist. _Sure, Link, get yourself hurt again like you always do. Real mature, punching walls. You’re a guest here!_

The loneliness is unbearable. It’s not even nine o’clock at night but Link throws himself back down on the bed and burrows beneath the thick blanket, shivering even though the anger is still flared hot in his face and hands. Christy’s words bounce and echo through his brain as he struggles to push himself into blessed unconsciousness, hoping that he won’t be subjected to the nightmares again.

Like most of his efforts lately, it’s futile.

**

“Morning. You look terrible,” Rhett says, looking up from his laptop. “Didn’t you get any sleep? There’s coffee, but it’s cold by now.”

“Yeah, it’s weird.” Link grabs a mug, pours himself a coffee, and sips it even though it was only lukewarm. He doesn’t want to talk to anybody, not even Rhett. He wishes he didn’t have to. “I went to bed at like eight thirty. I must be overtired or something. Not used to having no screaming kids around.” The lie comes more easily than he would have expected.

“Yeah, maybe. I hope you’re not getting sick.” 

The genuine concern in Rhett’s voice makes Link feel a little better. At least Rhett doesn’t hold grudges. He wouldn’t be able to stand it if he had both Rhett and Christy mad at him at the same time. “Thanks, Rhett. I don’t think I am.”

“Thanks for what? I just didn’t want you walkin’ around leaving your germs on everything and makin’ _me_ sick!” he jokes.

Forcing a tired smile, Link sinks down in a chair across from Rhett, who’s gone back to typing away at his computer. “What are you working on?”

“Just some things I want to film either today or tomorrow. Like the ghost trivia game we discussed. I’m just doin’ a little Googling, getting the questions ready. No, it’s okay, I can finish it myself,” he adds with a raised hand when Link opens his mouth to speak.

“Um – the ghost trivia game? When did you mention that?”

Rhett’s green eyes flash up at him, slightly surprised and annoyed. “Yes, Link. We talked about it for half an hour yesterday.”

“Oh,” Link says lamely, feeling himself start to blush a bit. “I must have forgotten.” 

“You weren’t listening. Great.”

“I'm sorry. My mind’s been so pre-occupied.” He hesitates. Should he tell Rhett about the fight he had with Christy? Rhett would be shocked if he knew what Link had said to her. Should he finally tell Rhett about his hallucinations, the things he’s been seeing and hearing…? _Do you want him to think you’re mentally unbalanced?_ Instead Link just sips at his coffee silently.

Rhett shakes his head. “It’s okay. I just…I know you don’t like scary things, but we _are_ here to work. You agreed to this too. Can you try and help out a little more or somethin’? At least listen when I discuss what I wanna do, since I’m doing everything else. You don’t have to be thrilled about it, but you could try to appreciate all the work I’m putting into this. I would like your input, at the very least.”

There’s no point in arguing now. The words remind him of what Christy had said to him the night before, and Link feels like he’s been slapped. “Okay,” he mumbles, and downs the rest of his mug to hide the hurt look on his face. “Sorry.” He can feel the weight of Rhett’s lingering gaze, and then hears a sigh. 

“Anyway,” continues Rhett in a gruff voice, “so I was thinking today we could first film a little Thursday mail segment with stuff that fans shared with us on the Internet. Even if we don’t have any actual physical things to share, we can still do the mail song and have a nice little interlude. We’ve been getting a lot of cool spooky videos, freaky websites, that sort of thing. And a lot of personal ghost-sighting stories. It could be fun to take turns reading them aloud.”

“Should we shoot that a day early? We still haven’t even done the EMF reader thing we planned on.”

“What do you mean, a day early? And the EMF video is up already. I did some editing last night, and e-mailed all the footage to the crew. They fixed it up good.”

“But it’s Wednesday.”

Rhett goes silent for a moment, and the stare he gives Link is more than a little cautious. “Link. It’s Thursday.”

“Nuh-uh. It’s definitely Wednesday. What EMF video? What the heck are you talking about?”

“Are you sure you’re not getting sick?” Rhett actually closes his laptop and folds his hands over the table. “You’re kind of freakin’ me out, man. If you’re kidding, it’s not funny. Leave the jokes for when the cameras are rolling.”

“It has to be Wednesday! We got here on two days ago, on Monday!”

“Link, we got here three days ago. We got here Monday, and then on Tuesday we went to the village and did our Ouija board thing. Yesterday we did ‘Ghosthunters’ with the EMF reader, and we got pizza from the next town over…There’s still some of that in the fridge, by the way.”

Link’s throat locks up and he doesn’t know what to say. He can tell when Rhett’s trying to play a joke on him, and the other man is dead serious. Link double checks anyway. When he slips his phone out of his pocket and glances at the date displayed on the screen, it shows that it’s Thursday. It _is_ Thursday. How is that possible?

“Oh…okay,” is all Link comes up with. “I…I was kidding.” Better than trying to say that he legitimately, and for no reason, forgot a whole freaking day. Rhett would likely suggest that he find professional help.

“Get serious, Link. Why are you always so weird? We have a job to do.” Rhett opens his laptop again and ignores Link’s presence.

Link feels the blood rushing to his face, a mix of hurt, anger, and embarrassment. He swallows hard and turns to the kitchen cupboards, busying himself by fixing a bowl of cereal even though he’s really not that hungry.

“Link?”

“Yeah.”

Rhett’s voice goes soft. “Look, man, I didn’t mean to say that. I don’t think you’re weird. I just…you surprised me with that joke.” 

Rhett’s apologetic kicked-puppy look is hard to resist. Plus, Link is uncomfortably aware that all of Rhett’s frustrations are entirely justified. “It’s fine. It was a stupid thing to say,” Link mumbles.

“Are you still thinkin’ about the stuff you told me yesterday? The vision of the blood in the bathtub and the weird thing in the attic?”

_I never told you that._ Link’s heart begins to pound again. He turns his head slowly, blinking.

Rhett goes on. “You’re too wound up, Link. You should have a hot bath down here in this bathroom. I don’t blame you for being a little freaked out by where that woman died. I wouldn’t wanna shower in there either.”

“S-sure, thanks.”

“And, uh…” Rhett pauses as if carefully considering his next words.

“Mm?”

“You – you _were_ joking about it being Wednesday, right? You were just trying to throw me off or something because of the weird time distortion I mentioned. You know, I think I just overworked myself.”

Time distortion? Oh, God, what was happening to him?

“It was a stupid joke,” he says firmly, putting all his effort into keeping his voice from wavering. “I’m sorry.” He’s going to start having to keep track of all the lies he’s telling Rhett.

“I’ll forgive you if you forgive me for being a jerk. Deal?”

It hurts to smile but he makes it happen. For Rhett’s sake, if nothing else. “Deal.”

**

Link sits at his laptop, alone in his room. He’s watching the video that they uploaded yesterday. Yesterday. As in Wednesday. It’s already got a few hundred thousand views. It’s a rather good video. Link himself wields the EMF reader as he tromps through the twisting corridors and into the dark closets and abandoned rooms with Rhett close behind him. They’re both giddy and they giggle whenever one of them flinches. It’s like their fights had never happened. It would be really nice to watch how the footage turned out, except that Link doesn’t remember any of it. 

He recognizes the shirt he’s wearing in the video, but doesn’t recall ever having unpacked it. When they pass a window on screen, Link can see that it’s raining hard outside. But it hasn’t rained since they got here – except the water in the pond _does_ look higher, and there’s a puddle in the yard that’s only just beginning to dry in the sun. It did rain. Yesterday, the day that didn’t happen.

There’s no fuzzy memory hidden in the back of his head. There’s no sense of anything wrong. He just went to bed Tuesday night and woke up Thursday morning. What did he do? What did he say? How could he not gotten any of his own work done? How did he manage to look so content in the video after the incident with Christy? Link checks his laptop’s history and feels sick to his stomach when he sees a list of his regular sites – e-mail, Twitter, Youtube – all listed as having been viewed yesterday. There’s even a new tweet on his personal Twitter. 

“I’m not going crazy,” he says determinedly. “I’m not, I’m not, I’m not…oh, gosh…”

He blinks owlishly at the laptop screen as if willing it to change before his eyes. An itchy tickle at his wrist breaks his daze and he shoves his sleeve up to scratch it. 

“Ow!” Link yelps out loud, wincing. What in the world was on his – 

The rest of the room goes grey when he looks down to see his wrist. There’s a hideous pattern of pink scars running overlaid with newer scabs, overlaid again with fresh, oozing cuts. How did he not notice how wet his sleeves were? The blood, it was everywhere – the other wrist too. How weak he was – how tired – how annoying that static was, if only it would stop, so Link could focus on trying to get help. It’s absorbing all the other noises in the room. What had happened to him? Mysterious bruises were one thing, but this – this can’t be real, it’s a dream, he’s dozed off again or something. But why does it suddenly hurt so badly?

The static grew louder. Louder. It hurt Link’s ears. No – that was wrong. It wasn’t in his ears at all. It was only in his head. And was it static, or a chorus of screams? Good god – the pain! It was growing with every second. The world starts to spin and the screams get louder. Screaming, sobbing, torment, he was surely in the pit of hell – and there was more, there was a voice. Someone talking over the cries. He hears his name and cringes. But it’s all in his head. Some part of him can tell that much at least. 

_Link…_

_worthless…failure…just do it, real deep, once and for all…_

God, it’s true, it’s all true. Nobody loves him. Not Rhett, not Christy…and it’s all his fault.

And then, clear as a bell, a woman’s voice, the woman from the dream who’d been in his bathroom acting flirtatious: _They don’t want you here. Nobody wants you here!_

Link’s eyes are closed, yet he’s seeing everything unfold in graphic detail. With someone else’s legs, he stumbles over to the bathroom and draws a hot bath that somehow materializes in seconds. He’s holding a straight razor in one hand. The hot tears on his face are indistinguishable from the steam of the hot water and the terrified sweat dripping from his brow. Suddenly Link is naked and immersed in the bathtub beneath lights so bright they burn his eyes. The tendons, he can’t cut those or else he won’t be able to finish – he’s got to get it right, do it fast, but as soon as his skin breaks beneath the blade the pain makes him falter.

_yes it hurts yes it will hurt, you know that…just go, straight down, then lean back and wait…nothing will ever hurt again._

_It will take everything away from you and suck you dry._

Drowning in red, swirling red, so pretty, darker with every second – and then the edges of his vision begin to darken too, and the warmth is gone, and it’s not pretty anymore, it’s just nothing. Blackness, darkness, death, cold. 

It’s not water he’s lying in, after all. It’s wet grass. Smell of earth, of stale water. Hands on him, on his back, his ass, his thighs…

_… Nobody can hear you, baby, yell all you want…_

Whatever’s about to happen makes him feel sick enough to want to vomit. A strangled scream tears its way out of Link’s throat. His eyes snap open and he’s lying prone on the floor, hands over his face. His sleeves are dry, his wrists are pale and unblemished. He’d fallen off the bed and pulled the laptop with him. 

“Link?” There’s a knock at his door, very quiet and subdued. The clear sound shatters the rest of the awful noises fogging his brain. It’s Rhett. Rhett’s right outside his door. Did he hear the screaming too? Or did he just hear Link fall?

The laptop seems fine. Link sets it the right way up, trying to remember how to think and how to get his lips to form words.

“Please, Link, can we talk?” 

“Go away!” Link finds himself yelling. His voice cracks like he’s fourteen again. To avoid passing out he has to sit against the bed, breathing hard, his head between his upturned knees.

“Link, I’m coming in.”

“Rhett, come on, I’m not feeling good,” he lies.

The door creaks open a bit anyway and Rhett sidles inside, ducking his long frame down to fit underneath the low light fixture. There are deep bags under his eyes and he looks somewhere between angry and concerned. Link can’t handle either right now. Can’t handle anyone else’s feelings but his own. He’s got enough on his plate. 

“Hey buddy.” Rhett’s tone is cautious and, to Link’s ears, a bit patronizing. He sounds like he’s talking to a small child. “How are you?”

“Fine,” Link says lamely, looking down at his hands.

“Christy called me.”

“What?!” Link’s head snaps up. “Why? What did she say?”

“She said you haven’t been answering her texts or calls. She’s worried about you.”

Well, that wasn’t what he expected to hear. For a moment Link had thought Christy had called to complain about their fight earlier. Not that she’d ever done that, or would ever do that – she respected his friends and didn’t gossip about Link to anybody. “But I haven’t gotten any phone calls or messages,” he says to Rhett in confusion. “And we just talked last night.” _You mean two nights ago, really,_ he reminds himself bitterly.

“She says she hasn’t heard from you since we left.” What is that expression on Rhett’s face? Link can’t tell. His mouth drops open.

“That’s not possible. She – she said – ” Link fumbles his words as his brain stutters. Christy doesn’t lie. “She must have forgotten…” Like hell she’d forget _that_ conversation!

Something in Rhett’s face changes slightly, just enough to let Link know how his friend interpreted the situation. He believed Christy, not Link. That feels like a blow to his stomach.

“It’s not my business, man,” Rhett says with forced evenness. “But I thought you should know. She’s pretty upset. She asked me if your phone was actin’ up and I told her no, not that I know of.”

_This is crazy!_ Link can’t think of anything to say. He can’t accuse his wife of being a liar when he knows she’s not. And it’s not like Rhett would lie about the phone call, either. Maybe someone had stolen Christy’s phone, maybe that wasn’t her after all…and maybe his phone _was_ just being weird and not sending or receiving messages. Maybe she’d tried to call him after the fight, and Link’s phone went on the fritz. Then she maybe twisted the truth just a little to avoid having to tell Rhett about their fight. That would be a logical explanation. Logical and completely plausible. 

Rhett shuffled his feet. “Does this have somethin’ to do with the fight you had the day we left?”

“What do you mean? What fight?” Link immediately blurts out, then remembers too late that he had made up an excuse to defend his behaviour the other day. He’s faked an argument with Christy, and now both he and Christy are pretending they _didn’t_ fight. Lies sprouted more lies – his mother had always told him so. “Oh, I told you about that,” he says like he’d just forgotten. He shoves his hands in his pockets and tries to look casual.

“You mentioned it, yeah.”

“This is…not about that fight. I’ll call her later,” is all Link can mumble to Rhett, avoiding the blonde’s gaze so his face won’t give away the falsehood. 

Rhett takes another step into the room, and the door falls shut behind him. “You don’t look good, Link. I’m worried about you. You didn’t fall and hit your head or anything, did you?”

“What does that even mean?”

“Well…you weren’t joking when you said you don’t remember yesterday, were you?” 

“Did it seem funny to you?” Link feels suddenly, viciously antagonistic and struggles to contain it. His temper is a volatile thing lately. 

“I was just wondering if maybe you had a concussion or something. It wouldn’t be the first time you lost a bit of your memory. I care about you, okay?”

The sincerity in Rhett’s tone makes Link wince. “Can we not talk about this?” He’s sick to death of accusations and of defending himself. Widening his eyes, Link gives Rhett his most pleading look. It works, and Rhett’s face relaxes.

“Okay, Link. I’m sorry I upset you.” Rhett takes a deep breath and adds uncertainly, “Maybe we should leave early. Leave this house altogether. If you’re havin’ problems at home, maybe you should be at home. With your family. They’re more important than work.”

“It’s fine. I’m fine. We can’t stop halfway,” Link feels obligated to say. God, he’s such an asshole. Rhett probably hates him. He has to try to ride this out, for Rhett’s sake. Just until they finish the damn – whatever Rhett’s working on now. Link doesn’t know and doesn’t really care. It’s unfair, but all he can do is make a half-hearted attempt to be on camera sometimes and pretend like he’s having a good time. He owes Rhett that much at least.

Rhett hesitates again. “I feel really left out of whatever’s going on. You look so strange, Link. And you haven’t been eating much.”

“I swear, Rhett, I’m okay. I just – maybe I’m fighting off a bug or something?”

Rhett’s eyes clearly say that he doesn’t believe that for a second, but he lets it slide. “Alright, brother. If you need to talk, you come down to my room, you hear? No matter what time it is.”

Link straightens up and stretches his legs out cautiously. He’s surprised when Rhett kneels down to give him half of a hug, one-armed and casual but no less meaningful for it. “Thanks,” he whispers, wondering why Rhett continued to put up with his bullshit – and how he could be so blind that he couldn’t see what was happening to Link. How did he not see how bad it was?

**

The nightmares come back that night. Of course the fucking nightmares come back. If this is what it’s like to remember dreams, Link doesn’t want any part of it. He longs for his normal, uninterrupted nights, or for cool lucid dreams like Rhett has. An escape from the dreariness of the mansion would be perfect.

Link tries to stay awake as long as possible, fearing the awful images that fill his brain at night. It doesn’t work. It’s a pattern now – first, the strange noises in his head, crinkling tissue paper or a distant whirring fan. Then the suffocating weight on his body, almost immobilizing him. By the time Link knows he’s about to be sucked under the surface of consciousness and into hell, it’s too late. The noises get louder. A crying child, the angry yells of strange men, a greasy seductive whisper. 

Link jumps randomly through time and space, but he never leaves the mansion. Sometimes he’s alone; in others, the house is full of people. Families, kids, teenagers, people laughing and partying or just going about their daily business. They are solid but Link is always able to pass right through them. The house changes fluidly right before Link’s eyes. 

Now he’s wandering into a kitchen that has no appliances or even a light fixture, but does feature a gigantic antique wood-burning oven. A woman stands at a table wearing a long dark skirt and high-collared blouse, her back to Link, and he can smell a pleasant bakery aroma. She’s kneading dough of some sort. When she pauses and turns as if she heard Link behind her, he moves wordlessly into the hallway and up the stairs.

_The souls of the damned breed monsters from fear. The souls of the damned breed monsters from fear. The souls of the damned….breed monsters from fear…_

Another girl is in his bedroom, sitting on his bed with her hands in her lap and her head bowed. What’s strange is that it _is_ Link’s room as it is today. His phone charger is still plugged into the wall as he’d left it when he fell asleep. The girl is young, maybe fifteen or sixteen. When she lifts her head he can see that her skin is strangely puffy and her eyes are ringed with dark circles. She looks at Link and tries to speak but all that comes out is a croak and a trickle of water from her thin pale lips. “Help,” she manages to gurgle, lifting her arms towards him. Her hair is wet and streaming behind her. Link stumbles into the doorframe as he turns to run. He has to go through the bathroom to get out, and he closes his eyes because it smells so badly of blood. The floor is slippery. _Please, please, let me get out, let me get away from her!_

_Thump. Thump. Thump. Thump._

It’s coming. It’s coming again. 

Everyone is trapped, he realizes as he runs on legs that feel like they’re slogging through molasses. _The souls of the damned._ Nobody can get out. That’s why there are so many people here. When he passes by a window he can hear a thin voice pleading with somebody to stop hurting them. Link shudders and keeps moving. If he stays still, everything will converge on him. Glancing into rooms as he passes, Link sees endless people, some who are normal looking, some that are like mangled animated corpses. Some of them can’t seem to see or hear Link at all. Others stare at him in pity, or try to lift their hands in a warning gesture. Sometimes he sees Rhett the way he did on his first night here, with a bruised and broken neck. Rhett always points accusingly. _Your fault, you did this…_

Alone. Unloved. Hated. 

_Thump. Thump. Thump._ God, it’s inescapable. Link can run all he wants, but he’ll never get anywhere.

A woman’s voice calls out, “It’s your last chance! Run!”

“I can’t. I can’t!” Collapsing against a wall in an upstairs corridor, Link squeezes his eyes shut and tries to tell himself firmly to wake up. It doesn’t work. Link wishes that the real Rhett was here, like how Rhett always claimed to see Link in his dreams. The two of them could stand against all the evil in this house. In his dreams, there’s never any question over whether or not the house is full of spirits. Link’s been under siege by their hateful presence ever since he’d come here. 

“I think I’m losing my mind,” he says out loud within the safety of his dream. The house itself seems to sigh sadly in agreement. A few children just out of view in the next room over break out in giggles. Trembling, he waits for the end, putting all his strength into trying to wake up.

For once, he succeeds. He opens his eyes, and he’s in his bed. Alone. Whenever he wakes up like this, Link is always terrified that something will still be lurking in a corner. Sometimes he’ll only dream that he woke up, and then when he tries to go downstairs to get some water, he’ll run into a family of strange people seated at the dining table, all smiling at him. This time he sits up sharply, pinching his forearms to be sure he’s really awake. Limp locks of hair fall into his eyes and his forehead beads with sweat.

He’s at the end of his rope. He can’t shake the feeling that if he stops being able to run from the things in his dreams, something awful will happen. 

Finally, at well past one in the morning, Link stumbles down the stairs and into Rhett’s room. The door was left open and moonlight streams through the huge window, illuminating the huge shape of Rhett in bed beneath the blankets. All that’s visible of Rhett himself is a haphazard tuft of hair sticking out. When Link sits on the bed, the figure shifts.

“Wha – ”

“It’s me, Rhett,” Link says hastily, before his friend gets scared. “It’s just me.”

“What are you doin’, Link?” The man’s voice is thick and rough. His face pokes out, one green eye bleary but open. “What time is it? Like two in the morning?”

He doesn’t know what to say to make this any less pathetic. “I…I got scared.”

“Oh.” It comes out like a grunt. “I figured.”

Link’s jaw juts forward. “What does that mean? Look, I know I can be anxious, but I just…I really don’t feel great, and you said I could come down here and – ” 

“Shhh, it’s okay. It’s okay.” Rhett reaches out for him to grab his shoulder, as if to make sure he knows where Link is. His eyes must not be as adjusted to the darkness as Link’s are. “I’m just tired, don’t mind what I say. I just meant, it’s pretty easy to get spooked in a place like this. I’m glad you’re here.”

Rhett’s hand feels so hot on his shoulder, like a radiator, almost painful. It makes Link’s head feel thick and fuzzy.

“I’m cold,” mutters Link. “Gosh, how are you so warm?”

“Come under here then, share some of the heat.” Rhett wriggles to the side to give Link room beside him, lifting the blanket invitingly. Link immediately dives beneath the covers and lies as close to Rhett as possible without spooning right up to him. The pillow and blanket are saturated with Rhett’s familiar musky scent and he breathes it in gratefully.

They lay in silence for a moment, trading heavy breaths. The heat radiating off of Rhett’s body is somehow deeply intimate. It seeps into Link’s tense limbs, relaxing them one by one. Link feels kind of awkward, but incredibly peaceful, too. He wants to put his arms around Rhett. He feels so safe here, next to his giant. Nothing can hurt him here. A thousand ghosts could be in this house and Rhett would protect him. He heaves a sigh and tries to position his arms more comfortably. It’s natural to want to cuddle a bit when you’re this close to another body, he decides. Link’s foot presses up against Rhett’s calf and he yanks it away.

“Oh, Link,” Rhett suddenly sighs. 

“Hmm?”

“You’re all fidgety. More so than usual, I mean. What’s wrong?”

“I can’t get comfortable,” he admits. He’s shocked when Rhett rolls onto his back and slides an arm beneath Link’s body to pull him close, until his head is nestled on Rhett’s shoulder. Rhett’s usually not a hugger, nor a cuddler. Link wonders if his presence is more welcome than his friend had let on. Maybe Rhett was having bad dreams, too.

“Put your arms around me like this,” directs Rhett in a low voice. Link does, feeling strange. There’s heat flaring down in his stomach, something wild and dangerous. But he still feels cold at the same time. Rhett’s skin is like fire, sinfully inviting. Dangerous thoughts dance at the edges of Link’s mind, the kind that only surfaced in the strangest of hours. The low masculine pitch of Rhett’s voice echoed in his brain.

“There, that’s the way to do it,” Rhett says quietly. His beard tickles Link’s forehead. Does he sound nervous, or is that just Link’s imagination? Rhett’s breathing has gotten a little faster like his heart is racing. One of his legs moves suddenly, pressing up against Link’s thighs. Then Rhett lets his hand rest lightly on the bare skin of Link’s upper arm. Goose bumps prickle up at the sensation and Link almost gasps. “Is that better?” Rhett whispers. 

Link starts to shake his head, and his mouth opens as if to protest automatically. Then he stops himself. Rhett had started this. Before he can think too hard about what he’s doing, Link puts his arm across Rhett’s chest.

“ _Now_ are you satisfied?” Rhett asks, trying to sound confident. The little waver in his voice tells a different story.

A sense of daring seizes Link. “Not quite,” he blurts.

Rhett turns his face down just as Link lifts his head up and suddenly Rhett’s hot breath is on his lips. They’re inches apart. Rhett’s eyes are no longer sleepy. Link inhales sharply and traces his fingers down Rhett’s chest, slow and unhurried. It’s a feather-light touch through Rhett’s cotton tee, but the blonde trembles as if struck. They both stay quiet, waiting for the shoe to drop. Finally, Rhett swallows audibly and moves forward just enough to let his lips brush against Link’s. It’s not quite a kiss. It’s like he’s asking permission without words. Link is the one who gives in and closes the distance between them, pressing his mouth firmly against Rhett’s. The heat in his stomach spreads to his head, his face, his groin. 

Rhett lets out a soft noise and lifts Link with his long, strong arms, pulling him up to lie on his chest. Link luxuriates in the warm caress and the feeling of Rhett’s toned body beneath his own, separated only by a few layers of thin cotton. It feels like they’re melting together. It makes Link moan against Rhett’s lips and the tentative kiss deepens. Rhett’s tongue swipes out to touch Link’s lips first questioningly and then insistently.

In the background he thinks he hears doors opening and slamming angrily, as if someone is throwing a tantrum upstairs. It should worry him, but everything is eclipsed by the feeling of Rhett’s velvety tongue touching his mouth. Link gives in again. He’s kissing Rhett for real now, and Rhett’s kissing back, and it’s not brotherly or friendly or even exploratory anymore. Their heads tilt and their faces fit together perfectly. 

There are so many things happening in Link’s head. One part of him is thinking of his wife and children, screaming in protest at the betrayal. Another part flutters frantically around his mind like a trapped bird, raising alarms at the noises coming from his bedroom upstairs. Mostly, though, he feels greedy and wants more. He wants to see what Rhett’s long golden neck tastes like. What those big hands would feel like if they stripped Link’s shirt off and caressed him lovingly. Rhett makes a low growling noise like he can hear Link’s thoughts and a hand slides roughly into Link’s sweaty black hair.

It feels good. Way too good. He knows they shouldn’t be moving this fast. “Wait,” Link starts, breaking the kiss with a wet noise. His head is swimming. “Wait, Rhett…”

“Link, don’t say it. Don’t stop this. I need you. I miss you.”

“We’ve been together for like a week straight,” Link mumbles, confused. He smoothes his hands over Rhett’s chest, palms running over the thin undershirt Rhett wore and feeling the small hard peaks of the nipples beneath the fabric. His dick gives an excited twitch at the thought of Rhett’s pink nipples hardening for him, just like his cock filling out the front of his pyjamas and touching Link’s thighs.

“I know, but…You’ve been so distant. It’s like you were a different person. I’ve been scared.” 

How would he ever explain what was happening? “I’m right here,” Link says simply, a little desperately. “I’m still here.” His hands clutch at Rhett’s ribs, a little possessive and frightened at the intensity of his desire.

“Yeah…you’re here. In my bed, on top of me…” Rhett’s fingers curl against his scalp, just shy of too rough. “You like that, huh?” he asks as Link’s eyes flutter shut.

The answer is yes. A million times, yes. But Link hesitates. “We need to talk about this before anything happens. What are we doing? Everything’s been so strange lately. You’ve been mad at me and I’ve been acting so rudely…”

“We’ll talk about it later,” Rhett whispers. “I love you, Link. That’s what I know for sure. I love you and you’re beautiful. I want you. I don’t know why. I want you more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.”

“I love you too.” Link leans in again, kissing Rhett’s soft lips clumsily. The action feels at once both new and familiar. They fit together so naturally, like they’ve done this many times before. “You have no idea how good this feels. What I could do to you right now. What I’d let you do.” The words spill out of him mindlessly, and they’re all true.

“Yeah,” Rhett groans, “oh, god, I feel the same way.” 

The longer they kiss, the warmer Link gets. He doesn’t care about the horrors he’s seen, all the things going wrong in the house. The taste of Rhett is hypnotic and intoxicating, making Link feel out of control. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, or why this is happening, or why it feels so darn good. Link only knows that he wants more of this. He wants to feel warm all over. Warm, alive, wanted. He wants the company of his best friend in the world and one last chance to explore all of their unresolved feelings. Rhett is making breathy noises into the kiss and his passion is such a turn-on.

“Can we…” Rhett’s hand slides down Link’s back and over his ass, cupping the firm cheeks one at a time. His other hand presses against the front of Link’s thin pyjama pants and it feels shockingly good. Overcome, Link bites his lip and rocks up against Rhett’s hand. The enthusiastic response encourages Rhett to curl his fingers around the outline of Link’s cock and stroke teasingly.

“Rhett,” Link breathes out with a moan. 

“You want more?” Rhett touches the elastic waistband of Link’s pyjama pants, tugging them down painfully slowly. He looks at Link for permission.

The idea of Rhett’s hand on his dick is enticing, but things are going far too quickly. The most sensible part of him is making headway against the rising tide of pleasure, and Christy’s face materializes in his mind. There’s no logical reason why he should feel as though he ought to cling to Rhett like this, or why there’s an aching sadness in the pit of his stomach. He reaches down to grab Rhett’s wrist and the blonde makes a questioning sound.

“It’s okay, Link,” Rhett says when Link just stares at him with wide eyes. He leans in to press a kiss to the pink shell of Link’s ear, then kisses down his neck like he can’t get enough. “You smell so good,” he says into Link’s skin.

“We shouldn’t…we can’t…” It comes out much more weakly than Link wanted it to. It sounds like he’s asking for Rhett’s opinion on the matter. 

Rhett’s lips go to his collarbone. “Is that a no?” he murmurs. “You don’t sound very sure.”

“I…I don’t know…God!” His brain is so cloudy and he’s becoming increasingly aware of Rhett’s stiff manhood pressing into his thigh. “I can’t think. What is this, Rhett? Why are we…” Rhett chuckles and Link tries to pull his head down from the clouds. “I’m serious…Wait, I can’t think at all when you’re touching me like that. I can’t cheat on my wife. Stop!”

The hand withdraws immediately and Rhett looks chagrined. “I didn’t mean to push you. Shit. I’m sorry. Are you alright?”

Link feels off-balance and ashamed as he pulls his pants back into place. His erection gives a mournful twitch but he ignores it. When he pulls back from the searing heat of his friend’s sweaty body, he immediately feels cold but more alert. “You didn’t push me. I just feel a little overwhelmed. This isn’t right. I’m sorry, but I can’t…”

“There’s nothin’ to be sorry about. You’re right.” Rhett kisses his forehead. “We can’t just jump into this blindly. I got a little carried away.”

“Is this why things have been so weird between us?” Link asked, struck suddenly by the idea. Could this be the cause of his anxiety? Was he having some sort of mid-life crisis? Suppressed memories and urges from years past are being exposed for the first time. Link remembers going through the awkward journey of puberty, noticing Rhett’s body changing more so than he noticed his own. Wondering, as his peers began to whisper about wanting to kiss and touch girls, what it would be like to do it to Rhett. Their friendship had always stood in the way, sacred and unbreakable, and soon the rules and social pressures of life had made Link forget he’d ever considered it.

“I don’t know. Maybe. I wish this week had been better for you.” Rhett’s hand finds his, and they twine their fingers together. “I’m sorry you haven’t been having a good time. I’d do anything for you, you know. When we’re done here, maybe we could try to leave early and take a bit of a detour on the drive to the airport, find some nice scenic routes or stop for a picnic on the beach…”

“I’d like that.” 

Rhett hugs Link tight against himself. “You’re too good to me. I’m sorry if this makes things weird. I felt kind of lonely, I guess, and I kinda lost my head.”

“It won’t make anything weird. We just…we have to think about our families first. If this had happened when we were young and carefree, it’d be different. But we made a promise.”

Rhett’s voice is thick. “We did. To our wives. Our kids.” His eyes close, and he presses his face into Link’s hair briefly.

“I do love you, Rhett,” Link whispers. “Sometimes I do wish things could be different.”

“I love you too, Link, you know that.”

Neither of them bother to untangle themselves from each other, but the boiling passion simmers down and it becomes merely a matter of mutual comfort.

There are no spirits surrounding him tonight. No weird noises, no hallucinations. Just utter peace and quiet as Link falls asleep in Rhett’s arms, feeling like nothing can rip him down from the cloud he’s sailing on, high above the earth. Whatever problems they’ve been having can be so easily solved.

“Rhett…my Rhett. Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

Rhett’s already asleep. Link soon follows, surrendering to the serene darkness.

**

The room glows with a strange flickering light when Link opens his eyes. Right away, he knows it’s a dream. The air feels too still, too dead, like the entire house is holding its breath. The strange part about it was the lack of fear. Link feels utterly and completely at peace for the first time since he’d come to Oregon. When he registers the man lying next to him, he smiles. Of course – how could he have a nightmare when he was so content cuddled up to his best friend? He sits up and puts a hand to Rhett’s chest to feel his heartbeat and his rhythmic breathing, pleased to have a living Rhett in his dream and not a gruesomely murdered one. 

The stillness breaks and a soft laugh warbles through the air, through the walls and the floor and every fibre of the house. The house is alive. Brick and wood that can breathe and think. Watching, always watching. Cracks in the walls ooze black shadows and Link stares at them defiantly, knowing they can’t hurt him. Even so, he keeps his hand on Rhett protectively. 

_You love him, don’t you?_

“Yes,” he sighs happily. He had always loved Rhett. He’s glad that their feelings had surfaced, if only briefly. Nothing can truly come of what had happened between them, but he’s grateful that he at least knew what it felt like to kiss the man. Eventually he’d have to tell Christy what had happened, he knew that. The storm would pass, though, and he’d still have Rhett as his lifelong friend. Nothing could take that away from him.

_Look at me._

There’s nothing to look at. Link’s eyes dart all the way around the room. “Where are you? _What_ are you?”

_Everything. Everyone. Everywhere. Come outside._

“Okay.”

He doesn’t put on shoes or a jacket. It’s a dream, he doesn’t need to bother with the little details. He just gets up from the bed, pausing to kiss Rhett on the forehead, and walks towards the front door. Where are his shoes? Who cares? Who puts shoes on in a dream? Knowing that the door squeaks, Link opens it gently and steps out into the frigid night. 

_Further, a little further…_

“Jeeze, it’s cold out here,” he grumbles to himself. He’s surprised the ground isn’t covered in frost. The grass is cold and wet on his socked feet. Link marvels at the intensity of the sensation. “What am I supposed to be looking at?” he asks as he approaches the line of trees marking the edge of the property. It’s so weird that the dark forest isn’t scaring him. The darkness is absolute – or is it? Lights flicker between the trees, blindingly white, not artificially yellow like car headlights. Link gasps.

_Do you see?_

Link glances all around himself, again wondering why he’s not more frightened. It’s like they’d always been there. Faces, ghostly faces are emerging between the trees and peering out through the windows, dead black eye sockets somehow focused right on him. Their paleness allows the shapes of the shadows to come into focus. They’re surrounding him. He turns in a circle, trying to see them all. The lake is covered in a fine silver mist in the shape of corpses. Piles and piles of corpses. Old people, young people, children, babies, all trapped here together. A crazy collage of clothing from all from every decade of the last hundred years. Suddenly he’s struck with the idea that this must be what purgatory is like. Alone in the darkness, surrounded by grief and misery. But he’s not dead. He’s alive, warm and cuddled up to Rhett in his bedroom, their fights forgotten. The dream will end. This house will soon be a thing of the past. Something cold brushes Link’s thigh and he jumps. 

_You’ll be mine soon. One of us. Forever._

“No,” he says aloud. “That’s a lie. You can’t win. I’m not scared anymore. You can’t scare me!”

_I can break you._

“No, you can’t,” Link boasts, thinking proudly of Rhett.

The hideous faces in the trees begin to laugh in unison, growing in volume until Link has to clap his hands over his ears and turn to run back to the house. Some of the shadows seem to give chase, but he senses no danger. They’re mocking him, making fun of his retreat.

_Link,_ they taunt him. _Are you scared? What a baby you are. Weak. Helpless. You can’t save yourself. You can’t run fast enough. Why bother trying?_

The words ring with truth even as his legs find a burst of fresh energy and barrel over the porch and into the house. The door slams shut behind him with brutal finality, like a coffin closing. Everything turns black.

**

“Link!”

“Mmm…” The bed is so comfortable. He’s in a cocoon of soft blankets and he doesn’t want to move. The whisper of his name turns into a sigh. Just a draft, nothing to fear. Link moistens his dry lips with his tongue and starts to drift back off

“Link.” A tentative hand touches his shoulder and he jerks awake with a startled grunt.

“Whoa man.” Rhett is standing by his bed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just – you’ve been napping for a while, man. Did you want some dinner or something? I’ll whip up some pasta.”

Link feels disoriented. “What…where is…yeah, okay, pasta...” He yawns hugely and his eyes flutter shut again. The promise of food is exciting, but he kind of wants to tackle Rhett and throw him on the bed to make him cuddle some more. “Mmmf,” he says in protest. “C’mere and nap with me.”

He hears Rhett chuckle. “Thanks, but I’m too wired. Jeeze, Link, why are you so dang sleepy? I feel like I haven’t seen you in forever.”

“Cause ‘m tired."

“I know you are. You’re sleeping too much, though, and I’m a little worried about you. You know you can tell me anything, right?”

“I know. Didn’t we already have this talk?” Link struggles to wake himself up. It’s so hard. There’s a huge weight on his chest, pushing him against the bed. “Sleeping too much? I’m barely sleeping at all. Except for last night, of course,” he adds with a sheepish grin and a faint blush. He glances at Rhett with a cheeky smile that fades when the other man’s face stays serious. Link’s own amusement quickly begins to drain away too as he shakes off his sleepy doze. What is he doing? He can’t be flirting with Rhett, courting disaster. It had taken enough of his strength to stop things from escalating last night. Teasing Rhett and acting cute around him was only going to stir up trouble. Christy was already mad at him, and when she found out Link cheated on her, there would be an explosion. A fight to end all fights. What would his mother say if Christy divorced him? Shame makes him feel cold and shaky.

Rhett’s face is tight. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there?” He sits on the edge of the bed. Link wants to grab him and kiss him senseless, revive the magic between them of the night before, but in the harsh light of day it seems a lot more like betrayal. What have they done? He’s never going to be able to forget it. Have they ruined their friendship with their carelessness?

“I…shit, Rhett, where do I even start?” He scrubs at his dry eyes with a rough hand. 

“That bad, huh?”

“It is,” he whispers, and he can barely hear himself over the ringing in his ears. That crackly, awful ringing. “She’s gonna be so mad at me, Rhett. Do you hear that?”

“No…Hear what? Who’s gonna be mad?”

“It must just be my imagination or something. But – Rhett…Can I be honest with you?”

“Please,” his best friend answers softly. The tone isn’t right, though. Rhett must be coming down with a cold or something, because his voice is…wrong.

Link tries to ignore it. “What happened between us…last night…What was that? What have we done, Rhett? I liked it, God help me. I’ll never be able to forget it, even if I live until I’m a hundred. But what about Christy and Jessie? Our vows? We can’t hide something like this.”

“Last night? What do you mean?”

Link feels a bit stung. Rhett is being deliberately obtuse and he doesn’t know why. Isn’t he worried sick about what this means for him and Jessie? “We kissed. We kissed, Rhett. Don’t play dumb, man! There’s no point in trying to forget it happened. It won’t go away if we ignore it. We have to talk about this, about what it means. I liked it, and so did you, and it could’ve gone a lot farther if I hadn’t made myself stop before I lost control!”

Rhett laughs in his face and it feels like being doused in ice water. “Are you serious? You must have fallen asleep or something. That was a dream.”

“It was not a dream! Don’t you try and deny it!”

“What the hell kind of dream is that anyway? What are you saying? You have a crush on me?”

“I’m not saying anything! I came to your room and you held me, and said you wanted me, and then we…”

“Kissed?” Rhett’s voice is full of contemptuous scorn. “I’m not – like that, Link. What the hell kind of fantasy is this!”

A lump rises in Link’s throat. Suddenly he realizes that he’s in his own bedroom. Hadn’t he fallen asleep down in Rhett’s room, cuddled up in the man’s arms? How did he get here?

Rhett’s not finished. “I’m not sure when you got so full of yourself, man, but I don’t want you. I don’t want to kiss you. If you came down and tried to crawl into my bed I’d tell you to get the hell away from me. Gosh, you’re so freakin’ weird! You sit around doing absolutely nothing, making me do all the work, having weird gay fantasies about me while you’re alone in your room. What the hell!”

Link’s cheeks flare with red-hot rage and humiliation. He just stares in shock, mouth dropped open. If Rhett sounded a little off before, he sounds like an entirely different person now. How could he be saying this? Rhett, of all people? Link gives in to the pressure on his chest and sinks back against the pillows, his mind reeling. 

“Are you embarrassed or somethin’?” he growls at Rhett. “Too embarrassed to admit the truth?”

“Truth? You really think I’d want to do something like that with you?”

“What does that even mean? What is _wrong_ with you? You were the one pushing to go further last night!”

“Stop being disgusting. You better stop this crap right now and shape up,” Rhett says firmly. “And start holding up your end of this company or I’ll find someone better to work with.”

“Someone better?! What are you saying? You can’t…you wouldn’t…what on earth?” 

“What, you don’t want that? You could sit around all day and do nothing. You’re so good at it already. Nobody really cares about _you_ anyway. I wish you weren’t here with me to spoil everything. I don’t want you here.” Every word drips with derision and anger. Rhett’s face is so distant, so closed off that Link can’t read him.

It feels like something has pierced Link’s body and is determinedly eating away at his heart. He’s standing on a precipice with everything he loves beginning to fall over the edge. Link’s temper makes him want to grab Rhett and shake some sense into him, but he falters. His chest is being so compressed that it hurts and every breath is a struggle. This can’t be happening. Rhett would never push him away like this.

“I’m sorry,” Link gasps out through the pain, determined not to cry out in agony. The memory of Rhett holding him and kissing him bubbles to the surface of his brain and he screws his eyes shut. “I’m so sorry. I just…I…” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I didn’t mean to. Don’t…don’t leave. Don’t be angry. I love you, Rhett. And you…” _You said you loved me, too._

He opens his eyes when the silence becomes suffocating.

“Rhett?”

There’s nobody in the room. Rhett must have slipped out somehow. Link frowns and listens carefully for Rhett’s footsteps in the hall outside or in his room below, and hears nothing. His chest feels light and free so he stands up and pads to the door, peering through the crack. When he’s absolutely, positively sure he’s alone, Link slowly sits back down on the bed, face crumpling. He’s going to cry, and he’s so glad he didn’t fall apart in front of Rhett. Fuck it. Why is he holding himself back? Burying his face into a pillow, he lets himself cry until he feels completely drained.

In the long run, it only makes him feel worse. Link knows he’s not a weak person despite his clumsy puppy persona that he incorporates into Good Mythical Morning. That’s only one part of him. The fact that he continually feels like he’s being a big baby, a soft frightened little victim, is beginning to wear pretty thin. It’s like all his inner strength is being sucked and absorbed by this house as if it were a vampire feeding on him.

_This isn’t a good place. Some people are fine. For others, it will take everything away from you and suck you dry._

He stands up from the bed again on legs as shaky as a newborn foal’s. Every muscle in his body aches. When he reaches towards the ceiling to stretch his sore arms, he yelps in pain. It felt like he’d been pushing himself way too hard at the gym. How badly had he been twisting and turning last night to hurt himself this badly? Another stab of pain jolts up from the sole of his foot, making him jump. His first thought was a classic dad response – that he’d stepped on a piece of Lego. That wasn’t right, but he must have stepped on something. It’s sharp, like a tack. Like a needle. 

Curious and grasping for a distraction from his stupid crying fit, Link lifts his socked foot up and turns it to the side. It is a needle. A pine needle. His feet are covered in them, and mud, and so are the bottoms of his long pyjama pants, like they’d been dragged through dirt. The problem with this scenario was that he’d put on fresh socks – these socks – last night. He hadn’t gone anywhere in them. He couldn’t have. Certainly nowhere with pine needles, like the forest surrounding the house – like his dream – Oh, God. The dream. Had he really walked out alone into the woods? Was he sleepwalking, or…was that all real? _Don’t be stupid!_ he tells himself, but he can’t shake the idea. The shapes of corpses floating on the lake, that all-encompassing presence watching him, speaking to him…Ridiculous! Still, the idea of walking around outside this place at night is terrifying. Nausea seizes his stomach and the pain almost makes him drop to his knees. _You’re mine now…_

Link isn’t a drinker, but when he hears Rhett step outside, he slinks downstairs and steals a bottle of wine from the kitchen cupboard. Up in his room, he forces down a good portion of it, chugging until his clenching throat makes him stop. Though it makes his stomach hurt, he knows he can’t stand another nightmare or another night of just two or three hours of bad, broken-up sleep. He can’t stand to think of how good Rhett’s mouth tasted, or how much disgust there was on his friend’s face as he stared down at Link and threatened to break the company they’d dedicated years of their lives to. The company they’d quit the jobs they’d chosen as teenagers and spent years in college for. The dream they’d chased across the country to the entertainment capital of LA, uprooting their families and leaving behind their loved ones. He doesn’t want to think about himself standing outside in the woods in socked feet, watching white faces materialize in the trees.

It’s been years since he’s gotten drunk. Probably not since college, when he thinks of it. It had been fun back then, but now he just feels sick and awfully tired. Maybe if he finishes the bottle, he’ll sleep for more than eight hours. It’s a good shot. The best he has.

Link wishes he could just sleep right through until when they leave. He dreads having to face Rhett again. How did things get this bad? It couldn’t just be him anymore. The way Rhett kissed him – that was no act. The simple and honest way Rhett had looked into his eyes and said, _I want you_ …Rhett’s erection nudging Link’s thighs eagerly, thick and warm and solid…but the hatred in Rhett’s voice, the threat of replacing him or abandoning the company…His mind spins, and so does the room, until he can’t see or think at all.

_I can break you._

Link couldn’t comprehend or come to terms with what was happening. The alcohol quickly renders him unable to do anything but lie on his bed waiting to pass out, fighting the urge to vomit and trying to stay on his side so he doesn’t choke on puke and die in his sleep. The fucked-up thing is, he’s not sure if that would be a bad thing.

A warbling laugh filters through the walls, the floor, the ceiling. Something touches his face, feather-light. The touch spreads until Link’s body is enveloped in a cold, sickeningly wet embrace. He opens his eyes, but everything is black. 

_I’ve got you now._

“I don’t care any more.” He closes his eyes again.

**

It feels like it must be nearly noon when he wakes up with the worst headache of his life and a craving for water so strong that he has to stick his head under the faucet of the bathroom sink and turn the cold knob on to full. The angle of his neck sends a series of painful hammer-blows pounding through his skull as he sucks the water desperately until he feels like he’ll vomit. Gasping, Link stumbles back to bed and sits down, pressing his hands over his eyes to hide the light of day. His mouth tastes horrid and he stinks – he can literally smell his own body odour and he needs to change his underwear before that starts to give off an even worse smell. When the heck did he last shower, anyway? He can’t remember. When did he last _eat_ for that matter?

It’s pretty much established that he’s an idiot. Link groans as he stands up and tries to bend over to change his clothes. The change in blood flow to his head feels like whacking himself in the head with an ice pick. When he looks in the mirror, he barely recognizes himself. Brushing his teeth and shaving helps a little, but he’s got dark circles under his eyes so bad it looks like he’s wearing smeared makeup. The whites of his eyes are dull and criss-crossed with red veins. When he takes a hot shower, the water runs brown as it pools at his feet. 

When Link finally makes it downstairs, looking marginally more human and smelling a hell of a lot better, Rhett acts like nothing’s wrong and smiles in greeting.

“Hey brother. How’d you sleep?”

“Fine,” Link answers flatly. He bites off the urge to add sarcastically, _How the fuck do you think? Look at me!_ He’s not ready to forgive Rhett yet but he’s not coherent or strong enough right now to start a fight. His head is pounding and his mouth feels drier than the Mojave Desert. Why did anyone ever drink like that for fun? Turning his back to Rhett, he fumbles for a glass of water and chugs it down.

Rhett hastily cuts his eyes away when Link puts the glass down, as if he’d been staring in disbelief. “I saved the last of our milk so you could have your cereal as a snack since you didn’t get to have it as breakfast,” he says, overly casual.

“No thanks.”

“You, ah…you alright?”

“I’m just not hungry.”

Rhett looks lost. He runs a hand through his beard and tries to start over. “I was hoping to film something today,” he says softly. “You wanna see my idea?”

Link shakes his head vehemently. What awful timing. How can Rhett think he’d want to work with him anymore, after the things he’d said? Link feels so hurt, so tired. “Not – not now. I can’t.”

“What do you mean, you can’t?”

“I don’t want to do anything. Not with you. Just leave me alone.”

“Okay. What’s going on?” Rhett asks him flatly, setting his mug down with a clink. “Why are you acting like this?”

“I don’t know. Fine, you know what, show me your dumb idea. Let’s just get it over with.” 

“‘Get it over with’? Link, what the heck? This is our job, our business together. You need to start working with me. I get that, you’re, uh, tired…”

“Hungover, you mean? Wow, I wonder why.” 

“Well – uh – yeah. But there are a few things we need to finish, and I need your help. I have Advil in the car…”

“I don’t need your help. Just shut up already. My head hurts enough.” Link doesn’t want to meet Rhett’s eyes. They make him remember what the man had said to him yesterday. _I wish you weren’t here with me to spoil everything. I don’t want you here._ Link’s throat closes up, humiliation and anger threatening to choke him.

“The project – ”

“Nobody fucking cares about this dumb project! It was a stupid idea to begin with. If you want to shoot more shit, go right ahead. Count me out.”

Rhett’s eyes narrow. “That’s it. That’s fucking it. I’m sick of trying to get through to you, Link.You’ve been pissy all week, and I’ve been trying my best to ignore it. I keep trying to be nice to you, and sympathize with you, and you don’t care. You keep throwing it back in my face. I wish you would just tell me what’s wrong. You keep disappearing and hiding, and now you suddenly show up looking like a scarecrow and reeking of booze. Is this some sort of mid-life crisis or something? I get the feeling you’re lying to me about a lot of shit. And your wife too. Be honest with me and maybe I can help.”

“Oh, come on, you don’t want to help,” Link spits. “You’ll just make fun of me again and call me a freak. You can always just replace me, so why do you care anyway?” 

“What the hell do you mean, again? Replace you?!”

“I thought maybe you’d apologize, but I guess I was wrong.”

Rhett looks baffled. “What in the world are you talking about, Link?”

“Yesterday, you idiot!” Link screams, hands curling into fists. His head screams too, in protest at the volume. “You told me I was disgusting. That you didn’t want me here and I was spoiling everything. You threatened to replace me with ‘someone better’! And okay, maybe I dreamed the kiss, I’ve been having all sorts of weird dreams, but there was no need to get all homophobic. I thought we were above that sort of bullcrap. You never listen to me. You never take me seriously. And you’re never there when I need you. You care more about this dumb project than you care about me!”

Rhett doesn’t look like he’s trying to hide anything, and the confusion on his face cuts through Link’s anger like a cold knife. Suddenly, Link is lost. The fight…did he imagine it? Did he dream it all up? No – he couldn’t have. He was awake! 

“I…you did, didn’t you? We fought…I remember…I remember you saying…” Strangely, he can’t even remember the details anymore. They’re slipping away. Just like a dream. Oh, gosh, had it been a dream? Link thinks back to how Rhett had seemingly disappeared after their fight. It did seem like a dreamlike thing to do. Link’s frown softens as his rage slowly dissipates.

It’s too late to take it back, though. Rhett isn’t easy to provoke, but he’s working up a healthy anger now. “What in the world are you talkin’ about? I never called you disgusting. I have no idea what you mean. I do remember what we did. And I don’t regret it, but I’m pretty sure you do. I woke up and you were gone, and I didn’t see you all day. I called your cell phone and you hung up. Then I knocked on your door and you didn’t answer. Thanks for making me feel like absolute shit, Link.”

Link is suddenly scared out of his mind as he realizes that he absolutely can’t distinguish between reality and his dreams anymore. He staggers and grabs the granite countertop to stay on his feet, his head reeling. 

Rhett isn’t finished. “I love you, Link. I’m always here for you. I’m always ready to help. But when you act all shifty and lie to me and disappear for hours at a time to drink and slack off to leave me with all this work…well, man, you better have a good reason. I’ve been covering for you all week, tellin’ everyone back home excuses as to why you’re never around when I call the studio. Something is seriously wrong with you lately. If I regret kissin’ you, it’s only because I don’t know if you’re all there in the head right now. But I would never, ever call you disgusting.”

Wild, confused, his heart starting to beat quickly, Link loses control of his tongue. “It’s this fucking house, don’t you feel it? Nothing is right. Nothing is making sense. Everything is screwed up, Rhett!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this house is…It’s…”

“Haunted,” Rhett finishes. The anger in his eyes is turning to tired sympathy. “Really, Link. I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you gotta get a hold of yourself. Let me help you, for God’s sake!”

“Don’t,” Link cries out, burned by Rhett’s expression. He feels about two inches tall. “I just – I – You’ve gotta be lying, or dreaming, you never knocked at my door, I would never ignore you – ”

“You can sleep in my room, Link, it’s all right.” Rhett fidgets with his wedding ring and relaxes his posture, as if Link was a wild dog who might bite at any sign of a threat. “Would you feel safe there with me?”

“I don’t need your pity. I need to get the hell out of here. _We_ need to get out of here. Please. Rhett…I can’t do this. I can’t do this anymore. God. I’m sorry. I can’t stand it here!” 

“All right, buddy, if you want to leave, we’ll go first thing in the morning.”

“Why not right now?” Link demands.

“It’s pitch black, and I barely remember the directions.”

“ _Please_ , Rhett. Please, I want to go. Let me go!” 

“I’m tired as heck, Link. I’ve been up way too late every night working on the videos.”

There’s a slight accusatory tone to Rhett’s words, and Link grits his teeth. “I told you, I want to help, but…God, never mind that. I’ll drive. Let’s just go.”

_Wait – what does he mean, it’s dark out? It can’t be later than two o’clock, if that..._

But Rhett’s right. Link looks at the window and it’s clearly late evening. The sun had just set. Did he sleep for eighteen hours straight? How did that happen? It wasn’t possible! 

“Please, Rhett!” he blurts, desperate.

“You’re in no state to drive, Link. Look at you. Look at your hands…”

Link looks, scared that he’ll find them covered in cuts or something, but they’re just trembling a bit. “It’s nothing. I’m – I’m just freaked out. I’m not insane or anything.”

The look Rhett gives him is so careful and searching. Link nearly growls. “I’m not!” he yells. “I’m not crazy! I need to leave!”

“Okay, okay,” Rhett soothes. “I didn’t say you were crazy. I just think you need some more sleep or something. Sleep right here, I’ll keep an eye out for you, okay?”

Sleep is terrifying. Sleep is torture. And Link can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore. “No. I need to get out of this house. I can’t do any more work in this shithole. I don’t care about it anymore. I’d delete every video we made here if you let me.”

“I know, I know.” Rhett sighs and takes several deep breaths to calm himself. “You’re not having a good time. You’re scared. You don’t like this project. I’ve heard it all. I just want you to feel better, okay buddy? Let’s not fight any more. I’ll finish the work. You just focus on calming yourself down.”

“Stop making this about me! You’re making this seem like it’s all my fault. Nothing is my fucking fault! Stop talking to me like I’m stupid. I’m so sick and tired of you. Of everything.” Link puts his hands to his temples, feeling his face heat up like it’s on fire. Everything is falling into place, and it’s so obvious. “Are you blind? Can’t you see what’s happening? You did the research, you read about the deaths here…”

“I did…” murmurs Rhett, low and cautious. Like he thinks Link might be sincerely losing his mind. He might not be wrong.

“The woman with Alzheimer’s, who lost her memory…The little boy who died in the attic. The suicide in the bathtub, in my room! I’ve seen them, I’ve heard them, I’ve been _feeling_ them, they’re all trapped in here and they can’t get out and neither can we!”

Rhett is looking more alarmed. “Link, hey, sit down. We _are_ leaving, brother, I swear.”

Link barely hears him. His mouth just won’t stop moving. “I keep losing my memory, I lost a whole day. And it seems like chunks of time just disappear. I swear I don’t remember anything beyond early afternoon today. I just realized that it’s dark out. I don’t know what time it is. When I last ate anything. And I didn’t hit my head or anything, okay? I still don’t remember it, Rhett. I don’t remember waking up or filming that ghost hunting thing or doing anything else. And before that, when we were in the attic, I had…a panic attack or something and felt like I was suffocating. Just like the kid who got shut in one of those old trunks. He suffocated, too. He couldn’t get the lid open. It went cold, it goes cold whenever this happens. I saw my bathtub fill with blood the first day here and I thought I saw a body, and smelled it too. And the noise, I hear it all the time, that weird buzzy crackly noise, and sometimes I hear people talking – ”

He’s babbling like a lunatic and he can’t help it. He doesn’t have much practice in holding things back from Rhett, and everything is spilling out at once. Saying it all out loud is somehow making everything fall into place.

“I have weird chills and hear noises all the time. I hear my name being whispered. I hear doors opening, things banging in the walls. I see things. At night. My dreams…my dreams are so bad, Rhett. I see the people who died here. I hear them. The girl who drowned and people who were shot or stabbed. I’ve never had nightmares like this in my life. Something here hates me. It keeps telling me it doesn’t want me here. It wants to take me – change me – ”

_The souls of the damned breed monsters from fear._

Link’s voice dies off mid-sentence as his arms prickle with goose bumps. He begins to shiver. His bones feel weak almost to the point of collapsing, and he again wonders when he last ate. “I can’t fight it anymore, Rhett.”

After a long moment of silence, Rhett exhales audibly and looks down at his hands. “You should drink a glass of water and lie down, Link. You – you really smell like alcohol. I don't know how much you drank but you’re probably dehydrated. Will that be okay? First thing tomorrow, we’ll leave, and maybe we can get to a doctor…”

“You don’t believe a word I’m saying to you, do you?” Link is startled to find himself almost on the verge of tears. Rhett was his beacon of safety, his confidante, his rock. Rhett always believed him, always. They might get a little agitated sometimes, but they didn’t lie to each other. An utmost respect for honesty was one thing they’d always had in common. “A doctor? Do you mean a shrink?”

Rhett hesitates before opening his mouth, but Link already knows what he’s going to say.

“You know me, you know I’m not crazy.”

“Link, it’s not like that. I believe you’re upset. I believe there’s something – ”

“Something wrong with me in the head.”

“Link, let me finish. You’ve been so distant and I’ve been scared for you. We’ll just get you checked out real quick somewhere, okay? Just to put me at ease, man. If you’re seeing stuff and thinking that – ”

“Don’t!” Link cuts him off, hysteria building. “Don’t use your fucking dad voice on me. I don’t need mental help, I just need to leave!”

“I’m only trying – ”

“You’re so patronizing, you know that? You think I’m sensitive, or weird, and you have to be the one to hold my hand and tell me there are no fucking monsters under the bed. Maybe you think I’m making this all up for attention or to justify why you’re doing most of the work on this project. Well, let me tell you something, Rhett. There isn’t anything wrong with _me._ There’s something wrong with you, man, if you can’t _feel_ that this place isn’t right. I’m sick to death of your attitude. If you cared enough about me to really listen, you’d pick up on all this shit in hours. But you don’t, do you? You’re so selfish. You’re content with me suffering as long as you’re having fun, right?”

One part of Link’s mind is horrified at what he’s saying. Another part of him takes a sick vindictive pleasure at the sight of Rhett’s shocked face. 

“You know what the worst part is? I’ve been trying so hard this whole time for you, Rhett! I do everything for you. I didn’t tell you everything that happened because I just wanted you to have fun. I didn’t wanna be the one to spoil this trip like a whiny brat. Goddammit, I put so much effort into being your friend, and this is how you treat me? Like I’m your child?”

“Link…” Rhett swallows hard and reaches towards him. Link shoves his hands away.

“Fuck you, Rhett. I hate you.”

It’s the first time he’s ever spoken those words to his best friend.

Link wheels around and runs before he does anything else he’s going to regret.


	3. Cataclysm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Trigger warning - The following contains a graphic depiction of rape**

Link ends up by the old shed, staring out over the lake, feeling his red-hot anger recede into a stomach-twisting guilt as he tries to catch his breath. It was a short sprint, but with the lack of food and lingering hangover, his body is definitely not in top condition. Lungs burning, Link bends over and massages his cramping side. _What on earth have I done now?_ he wonders, sickened. In the short span of a few days he’d managed to lose his temper completely on both his beloved wife and his best friend, and somehow lose his sanity, too. He’d lied, he’d failed at his job, he’d failed his employees, he’d called Christy a bitch and then cheated on her – or at least, he’s pretty sure he did, it’s hard to tell what’s real and what’s not – and then to top it all off he’d gone and told his best friend that he hated him. “Oh, God,” Link groans, tasting bile in the back of his throat. No wonder Rhett couldn’t take him seriously. Who in their right mind ever would?

The feeling of self-loathing rises in his throat, choking him. Rhett thinks he needs a psychiatrist. If he called Christy to share his opinions on Link’s mental state – which seems likely, he’d want her to know before he dropped Link off at the nearest psych ward – she’d support Rhett’s idea. She’d probably pack the kids up to go for a visit back home in North Carolina, where she’d have to tell her family what had happened. They would advise her to file for divorce or at least keep the kids away from him until he got evaluated. The thought eats at him like acid and he closes his eyes, wishing he could just vanish and reappear back home, safe with his family in Burbank. Back before they’d left for this stupid mansion. He wanted to sleep beside Christy and wake up to the sound of his children fighting over something silly. He wanted to drive to Rhett’s house to pick him up for work and chat about everything under the sun, spend the day doing what he loved, and come home again to his perfect family… the family that would never quite be so perfect again, all thanks to Link.

A hand clamps down on his shoulder suddenly. Link jumps and nearly screams, but when he whips around with his fists instinctively raised, he realizes that it’s only Rhett. Now he feels even worse about being such a jerk. Rhett couldn’t stand to see him upset, and had followed him, probably worried. It wasn’t his fault that he thought Link was crazy, and it definitely wasn’t Rhett who cursed and ran away like a kid throwing a tantrum.

“Jeeze, you startled me,” Link says apologetically, lowering his hands to his sides. “How’d you sneak up on me like that?” His words sound stinted and awkward, but he doesn’t know how to act. Should he try to be rational? Should he beg for forgiveness? Link tries to read Rhett’s face to gauge his mood.

“I was right behind you when you left,” Rhett replies. It’s strange, but Link can’t place the tone in his voice or the slightly pinched expression on his face. Link wonders if his back is hurting him again. On the heels of that thought comes another – _He wasn’t right behind me, he couldn’t have been – I looked back toward the house and he was still in the foyer…_

Link shakes it off – what does it matter? The important thing is that he’s not alone. His best friend is here. No matter how badly Link screwed up, Rhett always gives him a second chance. It seems an apology is in order, and Link begins in earnest: “I’m sorry for what I said to you. I never meant…gosh, I could never hate you. I’m so, so sorry, Rhett. For everything. I need you, brother, I’ll see a doctor if you want, I promise, if it will make you feel better. If we can leave here as soon as possible…” 

Rhett says nothing, his face unnaturally still.

“Are you okay?” Link asks with a frown. Rhett hasn’t let go of his shoulder and his hand is so cold. “You should have brought a sweater out here, man. You’re freezing.”

“Mmmhmm.” Rhett looks out over the lake and then towards the house, his eyes somewhat glazed. Link peers more closely at him, struck off balance by his friend’s strange behaviour. His heart pounds a little faster in his chest. For some reason, he suddenly feels like everything is a little too bright and false. The fine details of the lake and yard around him look like a painting, edges blurring together.

“What are you looking at?” Link manages to ask through the growing lump in his throat.

“Making sure we’re alone, that’s all.”

Images of faces and lights dancing through the trees fill his brain. “Alone? Rhett, we’re the only ones here. Don’t try to freak me out. I can’t handle jokes, not right now.” Link doesn’t care if he sounds like a baby. He’s so on edge, so terrified of something jumping out at him, chasing him. If Rhett thinks it’s funny to encourage his fear of what might be living in this house, Link doesn’t want him here after all. He shivers as the thumping noises of his nightmares echo in his mind. “Why wouldn’t we be alone?” he bursts out when Rhett doesn’t answer right away.

“Nobody needs to find out about this.” The other man smiles, and it’s not Rhett’s smile at all..

The thumping doesn’t stop. Link’s eyes widen, and he backs away, glancing over at the forest. He’s half convinced he really hears something. “Stop. Stop it right now. I don’t like this. It’s not funny. Rhett, please,” he almost screams as Rhett takes a step forward, not letting Link put any distance between them. Green fire begins to dance behind Rhett’s blank eyes, and he grabs Link again, pulling them close together. Pressed up against Rhett’s chest, Link notices that the man’s entire body is cold. He recoils. “Rhett, what are you doing? Rhett? Rhett! Stop! Let me go, man – !”

“Shut up, Link.”

“But – ”

Rhett grabs him by the throat, lips curling in a snarl. Link freezes, completely stunned, the surprise of it preventing him from fighting back automatically. Before he can speak to protest, Rhett pushes him backwards, shoving him against the wall of the dilapidated shed. Link feels his back connect solidly with a broken wooden board sticking out from the small building, and then there’s a flash of sharp, bright pain. Squirming frantically, he manages to pull away slightly, only to get slammed back down again. Now there are two flaming points of pain, and the one on his side gets worse when he struggles. In shock, Link twists his head around to look. There’s a rusty nail sticking out of the wood slat. It’s covered right down to the base in brilliant ruby blood. Link’s blood. Rusty nail, tetanus – when was his last tetanus shot? Oh, gosh, it was years ago now, how long did they last? Did those nails go all the way into his back? His shirt feels wet – really wet. Suddenly it hits him that he must be bleeding. He manages to lift his shirt and look.

Terror floods through his body, sinking into his bones, and he registers the feeling of blood draining from his head and face. His knees wobble and it takes all his energy to keep from falling. From what he can see, there’s one deep puncture in his back and one long slice up his side where the nail must have gone in and slashed upwards deeply with Link’s sudden movement. It oozes blood with the beat of his pulse, steady, hypnotizing. The puncture is bleeding less, but its pain is a shockingly deep throb.

“Rhett, help me!” he moans as the world spins and he drops to his knees. 

“What’s wrong, Link? Did that hurt? Gonna cry, little baby? Nobody cares about you, not anymore. Nobody wants you whining and complaining.”

“I – I – can’t stand up – ” is all he can think to say, stupidly.

“You can’t do a lot of things,” Rhett says in a cool voice, kneeling beside Link. Never has Rhett sounded like this. His voice is deeper and layered like there are three voices speaking as one. It’s familiar, but it’s not Rhett’s voice. “Can’t run, can’t hide, can’t take a hint, can’t just give up when you’re supposed to...” He smirks and reaches out to pinch Link’s cheek mockingly, grabbing hard and shaking Link’s head with the force of it. It feels ugly and condescending.

“Shut up and get your hands off me!” Link screams, flailing his hands out and striking Rhett in the face. He feels guilty as soon as he registers what he’s done, but there’s no time to apologize. Rhett didn’t seem to feel it at all, anyway. 

The tall man’s hands are cold as ice and strong as steel as he grabs Link’s shoulders and throws him hard to the ground. The yard is covered in thick grass and is soft from rain, and Link’s already on his knees, so the impact isn’t as bad as it could have been. It still hurts. Link’s head bounces off the ground and he moans as it makes him dizzier. Gosh, his back is so wet. How much blood is there? Or is the grass just really wet? He’s beginning to hyperventilate, scared witless by Rhett’s violence. _He’s possessed or something,_ Link thinks in terror. _This isn’t Rhett, it can’t be, he would never hurt me. Even if he was really mad._

Or would he? Link’s proven himself useless. Unwanted, weak, snivelling on the ground. The tall man looms over him, glowering. Rhett has never looked this cruel or terrifying, and no human should be able to have eyes that look as penetrating as laser beams. It hurts Link to look up at him, but he does, wincing, trying to give the man his best pleading look. All it gets him is a knee planted on his chest. Rhett leans a good deal of his weight onto him. At over two hundred pounds, it was immobilizing.

“You’re going to crack my fucking ribs!” Link gasps, eyes bulging. He grabs at the knee and tries to push, but for all its worth he might as well have been trying to shove over a tree. “Let me up, let me go!”

“You can’t leave now,” Rhett’s multi-layered voice croons with a sickly sort of affection. “You’ll never leave this place, baby. You’ll be one of us in just a little while.”

“Wh-what?”

“Your fear excites us.”

Link remembers. “The souls of the damned…”

“…breed monsters from fear.”

 _Ghost,_ Link thinks suddenly with a new surge of terror, _he isn’t real, this is a hallucination, an apparition…or a dream…Please, be a dream._

Then Rhett punches him. Link’s head is thrown to the side, and he hears a _crunch_ and feels his eyes start to water before the pain hits him. _You can’t feel pain like this in dreams_ , he thinks to himself weakly, confused and terrified. The world starts to really spin, like he’s drunk again, and with it comes an urge to retch. He slams his eyes shut, willing himself to just breathe through it. There are hands on him. At the hem of his shirt, pulling upwards hungrily, stripping him. He’s shirtless and it’s cold, so cold. Nothing makes sense. Reality is fleeing.

“Stop,” he moans, “oh, please, stop, I’m gonna puke. Why are you doing this? What are you?! Why – ” 

“You didn’t run fast enough.”

Link screws up his face and shuts his eyes tightly, images from his nightmares coming back to him with a rush. Being chased, being followed, being watched, being laughed at, unable to run, failing to escape every time. A whimper falls from his lips before he can help it, and he gets a cruel laugh in response.

“Look at me,” the many-voiced thing commands.

When Link opens his eyes, everything has changed. He can see the mansion from here, and every window is lit up cheerfully. The trees in the yard are gorgeous and healthy, and there’s a swing set and an enormous trampoline beneath what was the twisted ruin of a tree outside Rhett’s bedroom window. Now it’s a handsome, broad maple. There are cars out front – their headlights bounce off the trees. Voices carrying on the wind. Laughter, giggles, drunken whoops. Link looks up at Rhett, whose face is so shadowed that he can’t make out any detail or expression. He looks different, though, and Link feels a surge of dread. He should yell, scream, make the party guests come running – 

_Party guests? What party guests?!_

His fly comes undone as hands slither in his lap, unwanted, uninvited. “Stop!” Link manages to groan from a throat that’s gone dry as sandpaper. “God, what are you doing? What do you want with me?”

“Do you know what happened out here? Do you know why you’ve been so scared of this place? I’ll show you.”

Link isn’t given a chance to answer before being dragged across the yard by his foot. Desperately, he tries to grab a handful of the long grass. There is no long grass, though. The lawn is neatly mowed, manicured to a perfection he’s never seen. So strong, these hands. Link feels like his limbs are sticks of butter, soft and useless, as he flails and thrashes to no avail. When he cranes his head up, he notices that the shed is beautiful, if a little eerie in the dark. So quaint, with it’s pristine red paint job. The door is open a little. There’s a lifejacket hanging on the back of it. Link loses sight of the house as he’s forced behind the shed.

 _Rhett was right…_ he thinks blearily, _they have canoes, isn’t that nice? The kids must love it. The kids…_ What kids? “No,” he sobs, covering his face with his hands. “I’m not going crazy. I’m not. I’m asleep. I’m in my room. This is a dream. Just a dream.”

Rhett chuckles, but it doesn’t sound like Rhett or that creepy monstrous chorus. He crawls on top of Link, and his _smell_ is wrong too – it’s not Rhett at all, is it? It doesn’t even look like Rhett anymore. Link takes his hands away from his face. The man straddling him has watery, close-set eyes and a tanned complexion. His widow’s peak slants sharply upward, emphasizing his bushy eyebrows. His hair is dark brown, straight and fine and greasy. A ripe crop of pimples on his chin ruins what might have been his only good feature, a strong jaw. Link has never seen him before in his life.

“Who are you?” he asks weakly. He tries to sit up and gets pushed back down.

“Baby, don’t you recognize me? You had a little too much to drink at the party, didn’t you? Let me take care of you. Look, your clothes are all dirty…”

The man pulls his jeans off easily, and then his underwear. Link is naked, shivering, feeling the tickle of grass and the wetness of the dew beneath his body. The sensations are far too real to be a dream, he’s sure of that now. The man’s weight feels alien and wrong, like a corpse on top of him, and his hands are so cold that they hurt. Fingers dig into Link’s side, into his wound, and he screams and kicks in pain and terror. Everywhere the man touches goes cold. And the more he struggles, the weaker he seems to get. 

The stranger forces him to roll over onto his stomach, and Link starts to panic when he realizes what he’s trying to do. “No,” he gasps, his voice strangled. “No. No!! HELP! RHETT! SOMEBODY!” Out of his mind, he rakes his hands through the wet grass, reaching for a rock to throw, a stick to shove in his eye, something, _anything_ to defend himself. There’s nothing. Nothing but his own strength, and there’s none of that left. “Help!” he screams again, but he knows it’s no use. There’s no way this can be happening, not to him, not this easily – he’s never thought of being in this position before, not ever. This didn’t happen to men, except in prison. But it does – it’s happening right now. To _him._ This man…this disgusting strange man…he was going to – 

“Nobody can hear you, baby, yell all you want. It’ll only make this harder on you.”

It hurts worse than the wounds on his back and side when the man mounts him from behind and pushes inside him ruthlessly. Link can’t move, can’t stop it. Frantically he wills himself to believe in some separation of body and mind, that what’s happening to him won’t forever ruin him as a person. That it’s just a physical act, and that it would heal as any other wound might. But the crushing humiliation is too much to imagine away.

Tears mingle with dew as Link presses his face into the ground, trying to imagine himself somewhere else, somewhere warm, in his own bed or in Rhett’s arms. It doesn’t work. It’s impossible to think of anything but what the man is inflicting upon him. The pain is secondary to the revulsion and horror that courses through him at this violation. Adding to the horror, the man grunts and pants as he thrusts, taking his pleasure and revelling in it as Link lies helpless beneath him, cursing his own weakness and wanting to die. Death is terrifying, but it can’t be as bad as this.

_it will take everything away from you…_

“Yes,” the man whispers. “oh, yes, you like that, don’t you sweetie? So tight, so good…”

“ _Fuck you!_ ” Link spits, his face burning with rage. “I’m going to fucking kill you!”

“Come on, now, that’s not nice…lie still, take it like a good boy, oh…ohh, yesss…mmm...” 

The world goes grey for a while as the stranger spasms and twitches, moaning his pleasure into Link’s ear. He bites the back of Link’s neck as he comes and his teeth seem impossibly long and sharp. Link screams like an animal at the feeling. It’s like he means to gnaw right down through to the bone. There’s pressure, so much pressure on Link’s neck, his head, something pushing up into the base of his skull. His head is going to burst open. The pain, hot as fire, is beyond description. For one wild moment he wonders if he’s been shot or stabbed – if this is what it feels like in the final moments. Surely nobody could stand this without dying! Link half-expects some awful weapon to erupt through his forehead. Instead, the flames seep through his head, pool behind his eyes, travel down his spine and into his chest. Into his heart, which begins to beat wildly in protest. It feels like drowning. A voice inside himself cries out, telling him to resist, but he can’t. The pain is too great. _Submit. Let go. It’s too late for you. Too late…_

And he does. Broken and defeated, Link gives up. _Jesus, God, whoever, just let me die. I’m ready. I can’t do this…_ He waits, but nothing happens. His gaze wanders over the yard. The girl from his first dream, the girl in the green dress, is standing by the big maple tree watching over him. Somehow he can see her perfectly. Her pretty grey eyes, the tears dripping down her cheeks. Her hands, covered in blood, lifting to beseech him. Is she asking him for help? Or waving goodbye? Their eyes lock, but then Link blinks and she’s gone.

The feeling of having his skull drilled is gone suddenly too, but the stranger is still on top of him. Still inside him. Link sobs, then retches, as the man withdraws. He doesn’t believe it’s over. He curls into the fetal position, waiting, trembling. If only he could get up, find a weapon and bash the guy over the head, beat him until he can never hurt Link again. All the heat from a moment ago is gone and he’s getting cold. Blood trickles down his back, and it’s the only part of him that’s warm. Focus on that feeling, focus. Once his head is clear he can get help, and get revenge. _Rhett,_ he thinks dazedly, _Rhett, please, come, help me, I need you. Somebody…Christy…Christy, I’m sorry, I love you._

It’s quiet, he notices. So quiet. Where did the man go? The cheery chatter from the party up at the house has ceased. All he can hear is the rush of wind in the trees. His fingers and toes are growing stiff from the cold, and when he flexes them it hurts. It seems like he lies there for hours.

Eventually Link turns onto his back, shuddering, mindless of the dirt getting into his open wounds. He keeps his eyes closed, willing himself to fall into unconsciousness, or wake up in bed safe and sound. For a brief moment, there’s hope – the coldness and stiffness are fading away. It’s not exactly _warm_ , but he doesn’t feel like he’s lying in an ice bath like he did a few minutes ago. Or a few hours ago. Whichever it was. There’s some strength in his arms now, too, though his head still feels mushy and strange. Blearily, he opens his eyes, but can’t see anything. He’s in a thick fog. Useless. What _is_ that in his head? The weight, the feel of it, so foreign…Like the weight of the man on top of him, inside him, tearing down his strength and dignity with contemptuous disregard. 

Footsteps again. Thumping footsteps, coming towards him, getting louder and louder. And he can’t run this time. 

Link closes his eyes until he feels strong hands grasp his shoulders. Static fills his ears and dread swells up in his throat and he wants to cry. “Please, please no. Don’t hurt me anymore. I can’t…please…Help!” Link squeezes his eyes shut and shakes his head. “Just kill me, just kill me, don’t do it again. I’ll do anything, just _don’t!_ ” The last word rises up in pitch and he sounds nearly hysteric.

“Link! It’s me, man, it’s okay. Are you hurt? Hold still. Let me see…” A hand tugs gently at Link’s bicep and he reacts like a wild animal, flailing until the other man loses his grip. “Whoa, hey! What are you – ”

“Don’t touch me! No!” 

“You’re covered in blood, brother. I need to help you, okay? Shhh, I’m here, I got you. Stay still.”

A firm body presses on top of him, trying to hold him down, and Link screams in panic. He knows what happens next and he doesn’t know if he can take any more. And he’s blind. Why can’t he see? Why does his heart hurt so badly? It’s like there’s something inside him wanting to claw its way out. “ _Get away from me!_ ” Link yells at the top of his voice. He thinks he feels the man flinch.

“Oh, my god,” the man gasps. “Oh, god, Link…” Fingers lightly touch his lower back - _no, not there, oh please –_

“What is it? What’s wrong with him?” another person asks from somewhere in the background. “Is he delirious?”

“He’s bleeding and freaking out! I don’t know what he did. Oh, shit, this is bad.”

“Oh, my gosh! Where’s it coming from?”

“I don’t know. His back somewhere. Wait – I see it. Shit! It’s like a stab wound – what the heck…”

Link whimpers, rocking back and forth beneath the weight of the man, fruitlessly struggling even though part of his mind is already resigned to what’s going to happen. He’s weak. He’s useless. A victim, a quitter, a horrible person. And forever tainted by the act forced upon him. Link hates himself desperately, and he hates his assailant even more with a passion so strong he feels capable of murder, or worse. A hand grabs at him and keeps trying to touch him, and Link pushes it away, striking out with his fingernails – _you’re fighting like a little girl, you weakling,_ he thinks savagely – and catching a bit of the man’s skin. “No,” he chants, shaking his head. “No, no, don’t, please not again…I won’t let you. I won’t fucking let you. You can’t do it again!” If he sounds pathetic, he no longer cares. 

“Go back to the car! The first aid kit, I need it now! And find something – something to tie Link down, anything, he’s hurting himself…I don’t think he knows where he is.” 

“Okay. I called the ambulance, they’re coming,” the other voice says, scared. It’s a female voice. She sounds familiar, something in the back of Link’s mind notes. But none of their words register in his addled brain. He can hear her footsteps as she runs away towards the house.

“No,” Link moans, terrified to be alone with the man once again. “Don’t go…don’t leave me with him….”

Hands are pushing at his side. The man is rolling him over again. Link convulses with terror, but one of his arms is being held down firmly and he can’t get away. The man’s other hand is busy putting pressure on his bloody back. It hurts like crazy, and Link’s mind goes haywire at the combination of lying face-down and having his wound touched so roughly. Kicking his legs, he snarls to cover up what might have been a cry of pain.

“I gotta stop the bleeding, okay buddy? Stay with me. Snap out of it. Please, god, Link, snap out of it!”

Link doesn’t hear anything but the low rumble of the man’s voice. Though his throat is raw and feels like its being raked with shards of glass, he yells louder and doesn’t stop fighting. He’s surprising himself – where was all this energy before? One of his feet connects with the man’s leg, and he lets out a surprised grunt of pain. His grip on Link lessens a bit, and Link claws at the ground, trying to get enough leverage to roll over and stand up, to run. He feels disgusting, dirty, worthless, but he also feels like he wants to kill this man. This monster. He’s not even a man, not after what he did to Link. 

“Link, please stop! Brother, you’re scaring me. Stop struggling. I’m trying to…”

“I know what you’re trying to do, you fucking psycho!” With another rushing burst of energy, Link breaks free of the guy’s hold and manages to flip onto his back. The world is still obscured – tears? Fog? He doesn’t know. Doesn’t care. When he swings his fist blindly, he gets lucky. The punch lands solidly. He’d hit the man in the jaw, hard. Link hears a grunt of pain. _Good. How do you like that, bastard?_

The guy fights back, trying to pin Link down again, telling him to stay still, begging him not to hurt himself. As if he cared if Link got hurt. All he wanted to do was hurt Link. “No,” Link chants repeatedly. “No. No. Never again.” The monster in his chest growls its approval. Something else giggles in his head. _Hurt him back,_ the voice suggests. _Wouldn’t that be a lot of fun?_

They wrestle together in the wet grass. Link is pretty sure the other guy outweighs him, and there’s a lot of strength in his grip, but Link’s not weak anymore. He won’t let himself be weak again. Victims are weak and he’s sick and tired of being such a whiny fucking victim. Strength is finally flooding his limbs like a shot of adrenaline. He’s got powerful arms, and he uses them to punch his assailant in the face a second time, and then in the stomach. It feels amazing. It’s warming him up, he can feel it, and it’s clearing the static in his ears. His knee finds the soft flesh of the man’s stomach, eliciting a surprised cry of pain.

It’s his first real physical fight and he’s not doing badly at all. The guy can’t even hit him back! Link gloats inwardly; he’s a coward after all. Link is better than him. Right? He’s got to prove it...and he will. He’s winning. He rolls on top, digs his knees into the man’s chest, puts his hands around his throat and squeezes hard. After that horrific violation, anyone would take his side if he strangled this guy, right? Self-defense…he’s got proof, he’s covered in blood and surely bruises, too…and then this bastard would never hurt Link again. Dead, lying in the ground, cold…and Link would be safe, would be free. He wouldn’t have to be – 

_Your fear excites them._

– afraid any more. He’s sick to death of fear. He’s not a victim. Not a victim. Fuck anyone who tries to say that he’s weak, that he deserved what he got. Kill this motherfucker, prove it, prove it. The souls of the damned breed monsters –

“Stop,” the man chokes. “Link!”

“Shut up!” Link presses down harder, savagely. He still can’t see. Is he crying? Why can’t he see? His brain is so damn foggy. All he knows is that he’s got a chance to take revenge, and he doesn’t lose sight of his goal. His attacker is thrashing beneath him, but Link’s got pure rage on his side, and it seems to be working to his advantage. He loses his grip for a second and the man sucks in a huge breath of air, but Link seizes his throat again almost right away. 

_The souls of the damned breed monsters from fear._

The silvery wind whispers, cunning, soft.

_Kill him. Kill. Kill. KILL!_

The amused voice in his mind agrees excitedly. _Squeeze harder, hold it, then open your eyes, watch the light go out of his…you’ll love it, you will._

_Monsters, they breed monsters. Human monsters._

“I love you,” the man manages to gasp breathlessly. “I love you. Stop. It’s me, it’s your best friend…” His voice cuts out as Link presses harder into his windpipe, obeying what the voices tell him. So weird. What’s wrong with this guy? But Link suddenly feels sick to his stomach, and he falters, his rage beginning to dissipate. He remembers suddenly a different time when he’d heard those words, those exact words, spoken to him with complete honesty in that same voice – that lovely, familiar deep baritone voice – 

When he looks down at the gasping, choking man beneath him, it’s not the greasy dark-haired rapist.

Rhett is beneath him. His face is purple and his eyes are bulging out of his head. 

Link is strangling his best friend to death. 

He sees a reflection of himself in Rhett’s pupils – smeared with blood and dirt, his mouth twisted in an animalistic snarl. Shock hits Link like a punch to the chest and he lets go. Vomit rises in the back of his throat. The world has become completely clear in the blink of an eye. No longer blind, Link can take in the situation perfectly. He’s fully clothed. So is Rhett. His back hurts, but his ass doesn’t –

 _It never happened. Never happened…!_ Wild laughter rings in his ears. _Scared you good, boy, didn’t it?!_

But then the man’s slimy voice comes back to him. _Lie still, take it like a good boy, ohhh, yeeesssss…._ It sounds like the voice of the wind.

But it didn’t happen – he’d be naked – when did he get his clothes back on? And if it didn’t happen…no, it must have. There’s no way he could dream up that kind of pain. And what about his back? He’s bleeding! The nail wounds! From where he’d been thrown against the shed by the guy who raped him! How else would they get there? Link clutches his head, groaning, confused and terrified and ashamed. When he looks up, Rhett is sitting up and staring at him in disbelief. His nose is dripping blood over his lips and into his beard - _you hit him, Link, you hit him and then you tried to kill him, tried to_ kill _him, you freak, you murderer, you MONSTER_ – and his hair is dishevelled. Wet marks streak both his cheeks.

“Link…” Rhett starts, hoarsely, as their eyes meet. Whatever he sees in Link’s stare makes him bite his lip and use his legs to push himself farther away, terrified. Terrified of Link.

Link rolls to the side and vomits on the grass, retching until his throat burns and his head aches. He hasn’t eaten a lot, and the bile is acidic, burning. He’s crying, too. Everything hurts so bad. The pain in his back kicks up another notch, and then he’s dizzy again, dizzier than ever.

“Rhett, oh my god! Rhett! Are you okay? What happened?” someone screams. Jessie, it’s Jessie, he knows her voice instantly. The one who called the ambulance. How did he not recognize her before? Why was she here, how did she get here? Suddenly Jessie’s kneeling beside her husband, crying, wiping the blood from Rhett’s face tenderly.

“Who did this to you?” Jessie moans. “Oh, gosh, I’m scared. Rhett, say something!”

“Jess…Get back to the car, just go!” Rhett’s voice is raspy and ruined.

Link tries to sit up, instinct telling him to help his friend. If only the world would straighten out and start making sense. “Rhett,” he croaks. “Rhett…I’m sorry, brother…”

“Link? Lay down, hon, you’ve lost a lot of blood.” Jessie turns to him, reaches out to help. Her voice is thick with grief and fear and yet she still finds it in her heart to care for Link, too. 

“Don’t go near him,” Rhett chokes out, and Jessie frowns at him.

“He needs help, Rhett. I found the first aid kit. I can stop the bleeding – ”

“Don’t! He’s dangerous – he tried to – ” Rhett’s hands go to his throat, where dark bruises are already beginning to bloom.

Jessie gasps and drops what she’s holding. She stumbles as she tries to get away from Link as fast as she can. Rhett is there to take her in his arms and Link is left alone, staring dumbly into space. What has he become?

_monster_

That huge black shape perched heavily on his chest that night, every night, every damn night, _don’t you remember, Link, you woke up and saw it, it wasn’t a dream, and you felt it all the time, weighing you down_ poking and prodding at him with its penetrating little tentacles, finding all the chinks in his soul’s armour and consuming his strength

_your fear excites them_

and grinning, grinning widely as it fed, fed on him and became stronger.

_it will take everything away from you and suck you dry_

His mind turns to Rhett. A slideshow of memories – seeing ten-year-old Rhett walking down the street towards his house, Link excitedly asking his mom if he could go out and play. Fast forward to middle school, Rhett spending more time with girls and Link feeling jealous. Lying awake together at a sleepover, whispering about the changes in their bodies and the things they’ve heard older kids brag about. Link feeling a flash of longing, of wanting Rhett in some of the ways they both are beginning to want girls but knowing that it could never be. Camping together, laughing and drinking beers in the hot summer sun. The thrill of leaving home, living together in college in the big city, their lives stretched out ahead of them like a highway into the sunrise. A sense of awe at their later success, so much gratitude to work with and spend so much time with the man who’s always been there for him.

He remembers the way Rhett’s mouth tastes and the sound of him saying, _I love you._

He remembers all the awful things he’s ever said to Rhett and the feeling of his throat clutched tight in his hands. _I deserved this. I gave in. I should have tried harder…Monster, I’m a monster, it’s inside me, I feel it._ His head is going to burst at the seams. There’s a presence there, something that is much stronger than he is. It’s taking over, wiggling inside every little crack and crevice in his brain like some awful parasite. 

_it will take everything away from you_

Link physically _feels_ it taking over his muscles, his eyes, his limbs, his fingers. What does it want? What can it want? What can it want?

_kill him_

_Not him, not Rhett, please!_ Link yells inside his head as the force grabs his hands and feet like he was nothing more than a marionette. _You have me, isn’t that enough!?_

_kill them both_

“I won’t, I’ll never.”

_you will_

_NEVER!_ he screams inside his own head, pouring every last ounce of energy into fighting. He’s done fighting for his own life, but not for Rhett’s. _You’ll never have him, never._ It’s like trying to win a tug-of war with a rope tied to a truck, but he tries, tries, _tries_ , refusing to let go. His muscles contract and release as something tries to make him stand up, to lunge at Jessie, which would lure Rhett in close enough to grab, grab by the neck – yank and twist – _it’s easy, Link, I’ll show you, and you’ll love it!_

He feels his thighs tensing, feels his eyes turn on Rhett’s wife. His hands curl into fists and his face contorts. But it’s not him doing any of those things. _I’m still here, I’m still here!_ Link clamps down, holds on, screams in his head like a banshee and resists with all his might. Then Link screams out loud too as the world whites out in a wave of agony worse than anything he had ever known. Like being doused in gasoline and set afire. Brain surgery with a two-by-four and a machete. All logical thought leaves him and it’s too much, he can’t live through this, nobody could ever live through this kind of pain. His scream is forcibly cut off and dies with a choking gurgle but it goes on and on and on in his head.

Something _gives_ with a terrible sense of relief, like an abscess being punctured and drained within his skull. With it comes the horrific realization that he can’t feel the left side of his face – no, the entire left side of his body just feels gone. Not stiff or paralysed, just gone. He’d blown a fuse – a blood vessel in the brain? A stroke? It feels cold and final. Link thinks dully, _This is the end_ and briefly feels a surge of sorrow, which is quickly eclipsed by exultation; for a few glorious moments, the pain is gone. And his mind is clear and free – but not for much longer, he knows.

“Rhett…” he chokes out with the very last of his strength, knowing what he has to do. He has to speak out of one side of his mouth – the other half just won’t move. If Rhett and Jessie can get away, he’ll throw himself in the lake before he can hurt anyone else. Because he will. He’s dying. The thing inside him wants to kill and won’t stop. What’s another body in the lake, for a house that’s seen more corpses than the average graveyard? Link gulps a breath and forces the words out. “This place, this house, it’s…It’s in me now. It wants you. It wants me to hurt you and I can’t stop it.”

Jessie starts to retreat, her pretty brown eyes filled with repulsion, but Rhett only comes closer. Despite what Link had done to him, he still wanted to help, to comfort.

“Please, please, just go. Both of you. Leave me here. Run!” Without waiting for their answer, Link rolls to the side, horrified to feel the dead weight of his paralysed body anchoring him in place. It hurts like hell to pull himself towards the lake with just one arm, but he tries with all his might. 

“Link, what – !” 

“Just let me – I swear, I swear it will hurt you, please, go protect Jessie, let me do this!”

A siren begins howling, cutting through his head like a spike, and fresh pain overwhelms him at the sound. The previous agony he’d experienced is back. It’s too late – they’re going to save him – save _it_ – and more people are going to die. The presence within himself is rejoicing even as Link struggles to move towards the water’s edge, knowing it’s useless.

Suddenly there are many hands restraining him, voices talking soothingly in between shouting orders at each other. They think they’re helping, the poor fools – the damned fools! Rhett – where is Rhett? Rhett…

“No,” Link whimpers, horrified at the futility of it all. With a little groan, Link turns his head to the side to see Rhett looking relieved as Link is hoisted up and laid out on a gurney. If he’d had any strength left, Link would sob himself hoarse. Somehow, he knows the awful truth of what is going to happen. It’s all so clear now, what he is, what he’s going to become. How the evil spreads, why there are so many bodies here, the remnants of their earthly forms piled upon the lake at night. In his mind, clear as day, he sees a little boy being coaxed to climb into a trunk in the attic by his own mother. She locks him inside, her eyes dancing madly in her twisted monstrous face. Tragic deaths, unexplained murders – scores of them! – and Link knows now the great mystery behind it all. 

Next, he sees himself, a grotesque mockery of a man, seizing Rhett and aiming not to kill, but to spread, infect – it never stops, it never dies, and then Rhett will change and turn as well and go home to his unknowing family and – 

Link’s eyes roll back into his head and he slips mercifully into unconsciousness.

**

Rhett sits on the ugliest green vinyl chair he’s ever seen in his life, slumped like a corpse. Any passersby that happen to glance at him through the open door quickly avert their eyes. He’s been here for as long as he can remember, and he’s only bothered to change his shirt once. His jeans are still covered in mud and grass stains. There are bruises on his throat and limbs, just beginning to turn from purple to mottled yellow, but it’s all nothing. Less than nothing, compared to the state that Link is in.

Link lies on his back in a denim-blue hospital gown, eyes closed, surrounded by intimidating medical machines and devices. The wounds on his back, once flushed, proved little problem, but there was something terribly wrong with him deep down where nobody could see. The nurses had shoved a tube in his nose and a central line catheter into a large vein in his chest, both of which made Rhett’s stomach cramp to look at. And they’d put weird compression boots on his feet and lower legs to contract the limp muscles there, preventing bloodclots. His glasses are on a table near the bed. Rhett had insisted they stay there. 

“He’s gonna want them when he wakes up,” he told the nurses repeatedly. “And his cell phone too. He’ll want to call his wife and kids right away.”

They stare at him pityingly, and nod politely. Then they whisper to themselves behind their hands. At first they’d been cheery with him, explaining everything they were doing to help Link. Now they seem almost wary. 

Several tried to tell him the truth. Rhett didn’t listen. They didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about. If they knew, they’d fix it. They kept using vague words to describe what had happened, but they don’t really know and it drives him crazy. Anxiety, nervous breakdown, brain swelling, coma. Multiple doctors had examined Link and nobody had an answer, though they conferred eagerly with each other as if they had found some rare specimen. Link was half-paralysed, as if he’d had a stroke, but the doctors couldn’t find evidence to prove that he had suffered one. One doctor wanted to put in something called an ICP, which would be drilled into Link’s brain through his skull to measure pressure. He might soon need a ventilator. They would cut into Link’s soft throat and shove yet another tube into his windpipe, an endotracheal tube. Rhett can’t bear to think about Link not being able to breathe on his own anymore. He just keeps his vigil, talking aloud to Link of all the things that they would do together once he woke up. As if everything could just snap back to the way it was.

One nurse had attempted to explain the demonstrated lack of brain activity, and tried to encourage him to be prepared for the inevitable. Rhett’s fury, fuelled by lack of sleep and food and way too much stress, exploded out of him with a vengeance. He yelled at the nurse until she fled, and then security guards came with very serious faces and quietly threatened to escort him from the building. That nurse hadn’t come back again, and Rhett hadn’t yelled again. For Link’s sake. He’d be so scared when he woke up, with that awful needle in his chest and the tube in his nose. Rhett had to be there for him. 

“Rhett? Are you awake?”

He jolts right up out of the chair at the sound of the voice, thinking wildly that maybe Link had woken up, but when he blinks he knows its Jessie. Her face is plain, and her eyes are a little redder than usual, and she looks ten years older than she did a month ago. Rhett had called her halfway through their stay at the mansion, but forgets what he said in the voicemail he left to make her fly by herself all the way up to Brookings to come get him. He must have sounded half out of his mind. He remembers telling her that he’d kissed Link, that Link was drinking too much and eating too little and looking sometimes like a completely different person. That he’d kept wanting to throw Link in the car and drive off as fast as he could, but somehow whenever he tried to find Link and leave, his mind would skip and jump ahead and he’d forget all about it. As if something was deliberately preventing him from any rescue attempts.

Jessie said she kept trying to call him back. This was weird, since Rhett didn’t see any missed calls on his phone. He’d tried calling her again, too, but he couldn’t seem to get a signal whenever he tried to dial. The last phone call he received was from Christy, when she asked him if Link’s phone had broken. At the time Rhett assumed that Link, in his strangely distracted and temperamental mood, was purposely ignoring his wife. Now, recalling the way his own phone had stopped working properly, and the way his emails began failing to send even though the Internet connection was perfectly fine, he wasn’t so sure.

Jessie is staring at him and Rhett comes back to the present with a start. “You have to come home. Please,” she begs, sounding exhausted.

Rhett only blinks at her dumbly. “I can’t. Link…Link will want me here, when he wakes up.”

“Rhett, we’ve been over this,” Jessie begins carefully, in a small voice. “Remember, honey? The doctors told us – ”

“Link will want me here when he wakes up. He’ll want somebody here. I gotta tell him I’m sorry.”

“The doctors say he’s probably not going to – ”

“I have to tell him I’m sorry when he wakes up!” Rhett tried to say loudly, but it comes out as a strangled sort of yell. Jessie flinches, her hand going to her mouth.

“Oh, baby,” she whispers. “Oh…oh, Rhett, what a mess.” She’s crying silently, tears streaming down her cheeks. Rhett knows he should comfort her, like a good husband, but he’s just so weak and tired.

His clothes are hanging off his body. He can’t remember the last time he ate. Jessie had brought him Tupperware containers full of food but he forgot about them for too long and they’d spoiled. Someone – a friend of Link’s dropping by to visit, a faceless stranger in Rhett’s memory – brought him a coffee two days ago. He remembers a slice of cold pizza somewhere in the last week. There’s a vending machine close to Link’s room and he had a packet of Funyuns and a Coke a few days ago with the last of the change in his pocket. Other people had stared at him as he staggered down the hallway looking like a drunkard in an alley behind a seedy bar. They had looked shocked. A plump mother had yanked her toddler away from Rhett as fast as she could, and even the kid went silent when he caught sight of Rhett.

He remembers ordering chicken and egg rolls with Link and eating the leftovers in the car. They’d been laughing, both of them, excited just to be together. Link’s eyes had been bright as jewels. Now he’s a sickly pale colour and he hadn’t opened his eyes in forever. He’s a shadow of himself. Rhett’s vision blurs and he automatically grabs yet another Kleenex from the box beside the bed to mop away the tears. 

Suddenly Jessie hugs him tightly, and Rhett buries his face in her hair tries not to burst into hysterical sobs at the comforting gesture that he doesn’t deserve.

“One more night, babe,” she murmurs. “Then you have to come home. I need you. The kids need you too. Christy needs our help to get through this. You need to shower, and get yourself healthy again. I brought you some more food, and you have to promise me you’ll eat it this time. We all need you, Rhett…please don’t forget that.”

“I know,” he grits out. “I know. Link needed me, too. He needed me and I – ” his throat locks and he swallows hard. “I wasn’t there for him, Jessie. I didn’t listen…I knew something was wrong almost right away and I did nothing – we could’ve still gotten out, we left just fine on Tuesday in the car – I – oh, damn, I’m not gonna cry. I’m not…”

“It’s okay to cry if you have to. It’s just me here. Nothing was your fault, hon, and you did try to help. If you hadn’t have called me when you did…” Her eyes suddenly fill with anguish as the thought passes through her brain. 

“It’s all my fault,” Rhett says slowly. The dam breaks and the tears flow. “All my fault, Jess. I didn’t do anything to help him. He wanted to leave. He – he begged me to leave. And I said no. I told him I was t-too tired – oh, god, what have I done?”

Jessie tries to stroke his hair, to soothe him. Seized with self-loathing, he pushes her hands away and wraps his arms around himself. Then she starts to cry, too, and Rhett feels like the worst person to have ever walked the surface of the planet. 

It’s just about the worst possible time for Jessie’s parents to come in. She’d wanted extra help around the house - Link’s kids were staying over a lot, as Christy in her grief became too absent-minded to find time to cook and clean and supervise. Rhett’s father-in-law takes in the scene before him and opens his mouth angrily, only to be hushed by his mother-in-law putting a hand on his arm.

 _They think I’m crazy,_ Rhett thinks to himself dully. He remembers how agonized Link had been when Rhett had thought the same thing about him, and a fresh wave of hurt drowns out the quiet conversation between his wife and her parents. Sinking into his chair, Rhett puts his head down between his knees and breathes steadily. Dizzy spells were becoming all too common for him – not surprising, considering his state of near-starvation. 

A hand on his shoulder brings him around again after some time. Jessie’s face is pale and wan, and she’s alone. “We’re going home, okay? My parents are driving me. Don’t forget about your food, you have to eat it this time.”

He wets his dry lips with his tongue and tries to think of something to say, but he doesn’t have words. The silence lingers, awkward and cold, a massive gulf widening between them.

“I…I love you, Rhett.” Jessie hesitates, waiting for his response. 

When he still can’t bring himself to speak, she turns and almost runs from the room, letting out what might have been a sob.

Rhett closes his eyes again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I lied - there will be one more teeny part as a conclusion.  
> But if you want the happiest possible ending, stop reading now...


	4. Awakened

Later, much later, Rhett wakes in the familiar silence of Link’s hospital room, as suddenly alert as if he’d been doused in ice water. His stomach lurches; something’s changed. Something is very, very wrong. Rhett sits up, eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness as he focuses on the prone body on the bed beside him. Link’s chest rises and falls normally beneath his dull blue hospital gown but Rhett senses an enormous difference in his friend’s presence. A strange sound rushes through the room like an autumn breeze stirring through piles of raked leaves. Shaking his head to clear his obviously sleep-addled brain, he tries to figure out the cause of his unease. With the door open, he’s usually able to hear the sounds of quiet talking between other patients and their loved ones, the rhythmic patting of shoes walking to and fro, nurses and doctors conversing briskly as they pass. But now, save for the rustling, everything is silent as a graveyard.

That shouldn’t matter. Link’s vitals flash on one screen, steady. On another, the electric spikes of his diminished brain activity show no change. Rhett had been there when they pumped liquefied nutritional sludge to his stomach through Link’s nose earlier in the evening. The IV bag perched on the skeletal metal tree is still more than a quarter full. Link is breathing well, being fed, being kept alive – so why the cold sweat, why this growing terror? He examines Link’s pale, still face.

Suddenly, Link’s eyes snap open wide with no trace of bleariness or confusion. 

Rhett gasps so hard that the sound gets caught in his throat. “Oh, Link, thank god,” he manages to say in a thick, cracked voice. “You’re alive…you’re okay…Link, it’s me, it’s Rhett. You’re in the hospital, buddy. I’m here for you.” He aches to reach out and touch Link, to hug him, but he’s frozen in place. 

Link says nothing, but his head slowly turns towards Rhett. There’s something incredibly inhuman about his face. It’s utterly without expression, like a painted mask. Nausea grips Rhett’s stomach tight. Is he dreaming? “Can you hear me? How do you feel, brother?” he asks Link weakly.

Silence. Rhett’s heartbeat roars in his ears and his breath comes a little faster. “What happened to you? I’ve gotta call the doctor…somebody…Don’t worry, buddy, I’ll get someone…” But his legs won’t work.

The slight lopsidedness of his best friend’s half-paralysed face disappears as his full lips curve up slowly in a chilling Cheshire smile. “Oh, you’re not going to do that, Rhett,” Link whispers, and his voice is like a deadly viper slithering through dry grass. His eyes are two chips of blue ice in a face as waxy and still as a corpse save for that chilling grin. “You aren’t going anywhere.”

“Link?” Rhett’s voice is so high-pitched that it’s utterly unrecognizable. As soon as he says the name, he knows it’s not right. 

“Not anymore,” the silky voice returns, as the figure sits up in bed stiffly. A chilling laugh erupts and Rhett can see Link’s teeth gleaming in the light filtering through the cracks in the door. “It’s too late for him. He’s gone.” 

“Gone!?” His mouth falls into a perfect, almost comical O. “No…we got to you in time…” The steady rhythm of beeps from Link’s heart monitor fades beneath the increasingly loud static building in Rhett’s ears.

“Oh, he surprised us too. What a fighter he turned out to be…only at the end, though. We figured he’d be easy…but oh, well. Too late, too late for you both.”

“W-what? No, it’s not too late…Link…Link!” 

Grimacing to find itself attached to the bed by IV tubes and monitors, the strange figure yanks away the central line catheter, spraying deep crimson blood over its gown and the sheets. It catches sight of Rhett’s horrified sympathy and makes a short bark of a laugh. “Does it scare you, the blood? Your friend can’t feel a thing.” As if to drive this point home, it yanks at his nasogastric tube and throws it to the side, and then reaches further down to pull out the Foley catheter too. 

Rhett can’t help but wince. “Let me help you,” he tries, refusing to accept the truth. Link must be delirious, hallucinating again, he was sick and traumatized by something but the doctors would surely fix it. “Link, please!” 

Rhett gives a strangled groan of surprise and pain as the man’s hands seize his shoulders, fingernails digging into skin. _This house, it’s in me now. Run!_

“You thought you got away, didn’t you? You were wrong.” The thing laughs in his face. Its breath is icy as an Arctic gust of wind.

“Oh, my god,” Rhett whimpers through lips that feel dry as sawdust. Its hands feel cold, mechanical, so strong that they could rip his arms right off.

“You should have listened to him. I can smell your fear,” the thing that is not Link whispers back. “I love it. I want you.”

Rhett has a sudden flash of holding Link, the real Link, in his arms, in his bed. Seeing, for once, the naked vulnerability in his blue eyes instead of the increasingly hostile and yet strangely vacant expression he’d been wearing all the time. Feeling his little body shivering and twitching in the bed beside him, fighting his own terrible battle, wanting comfort so badly yet unable to confide to Rhett was he was going through. Rhett had sensed his anguish and couldn’t make heads or tails of it at the time. All he knew was that he couldn’t let Link slip out of his grasp. He’d been holding him so tightly as they’d fallen asleep together…and yet, when Rhett woke up, he was alone, and the mattress beside him was cold.

 _I want you,_ Rhett had said. All the feelings he’d ignored or suppressed for so long had exploded out of him like a dam bursting from the increasing pressure of floodwaters. They were both scared, horribly scared of something neither could understand. And it was so easy to forget the rest of the world and to give in to those base urges, to kiss and fondle, than to try and talk about their problems. Link’s cold distance was a terrible thing, and that he’d come down to Rhett’s bed seeking comfort had stirred up something hot in Rhett’s stomach that had made him act unreasonable. It was nice to be needed. He’d sensed that something had been deeply wrong – that he was slowly losing his best friend, and the harder he’d tried to cling, the faster Link faded away. 

Why hadn’t he realized it? Why did he think it would be a good idea to help Link with his fear by trying to push him into something sexual? And why hadn’t they left the fucking house? _I could have saved him…oh, Link, I love you, I’m sorry._

And now it was too late. The thing that was not Link was staring at him hungrily, like it was drinking his painful thoughts and savouring the taste. Rhett makes one last futile attempt to make himself run, stand, back away, anything. He only manages a whimper. Useless to fight. He deserved to die anyway. He was the reason Link had died, days and days ago now, bloody and screaming and terrified on the filthy lawn of a strange house far away from his home and family. When that thought crosses Rhett’s mind, he knows it’s true. The paramedics were too late and Rhett had been standing vigil this past week over an empty husk, a corpse. Whatever was animating it now was not Link and never would be. It was one of the things…or a part of the thing, perhaps…that had been driving people to madness and ruin for more than a century in an old Victorian house near the southern coast of Oregon. 

“Don’t worry, Rhett, this won’t take long,” it says with a chilling smile. There’s a bright flash of pain on each of Rhett’s arms followed by the wetness of welling blood as icy fingers sink into his skin. “It only hurt your friend because he was…most uncooperative. If you just lie still…take it like a good boy…then in a little while you’ll be one of us…and everything will be just fine.”

“What _are_ you?!” Rhett chokes. “No, please – !” Then he notices that the Link-thing’s mouth is full of fangs, like the gaping maw of a shark rising from the depths of the ocean to swallow him whole. His brain can’t handle this, can’t handle the sheer terror, and his eyes slam shut. The barking laughter from the beast in the body of his friend sounds like it’s coming from inside his head. There’s a whole slew of voices in his head, actually, or else it’s a single voice resonating with so many layers it sounds like a chorus. It’s speaking so quietly, and yet Rhett understands everything. What it wants. Who it wants, what it means to do with him, what it had done to Link…it won’t stop. It won’t ever stop, and nothing can get in its way.

“Jessie,” Rhett cries out. He manages to thrash back and forth, not thinking, the brainless movements of a fly trapped in a light fixture. Something snags his ankle and he goes down hard, smacking his head off greyish-white tile. Moments later, the thing is on top of him, and it seizes him more tightly than before. That nightmarish jaw clamps down on the back of his neck, sinking in deep. Rhett begins to scream in pure agony, clawing at the floor, sparks bursting behind his eyeballs. Gruesome images of his wife and children mangled and destroyed in their beds fill his brain, the feeling of their confusion and terror, driving him mad. A flash of his own hands covered in blood. Then an image of Link held down and stripped naked, helpless beneath some disgusting man whose hand pushed his face into the cold mud as he committed the unspeakable. Rhett can feel it, feel everything as if he’d lived it himself.

“Link,” he sobs out. “I’m…sorry…”

The pain only grows, impossibly, is there a limit to how much pain you can take before you just pass out or die? God, he hopes so, oh, God, his spine, his _brain_ , the mounting pressure, the PAIN – ! 

_Monsters, the souls of the damned breed monsters –_

The fangs push in deeper and Rhett’s scream is cut brutally short.


End file.
